Sensory and chemical analyses were performed during the chilled storage of whole and filleted horse mackerel (Trachurus trachurus), an underutilized medium-fat fish species. For both kinds of fish products, satisfactory correlations with the storage time were obtained for amine formation (total volatile basenitrogen and trimethylamine-nitrogen), lipid damage (free fatty acid formation), and formation of interaction compounds (fluorescence detection in the aqueous phase). Sensory analyses showed a gradual lower grading with time, with a shelf life of 14 d for whole-fish samples and 12 d for fillet samples. Correlation and multivariate analyses between the sensory attributes and the chemical indices showed that trimethylamine-nitrogen detection was the most accurate chemical method for damage assessment during the chilled storage of whole and filleted horse mackerel.Paper no. J9831 in JAOCS 78, 857-862 (August 2001).
KEY WORDS:Chilling, damage, fillets, sensory and chemical analysis, underutilized fish, whole fish.Fish and other marine species are the raw materials for products of great economic importance in many countries. The fish industry is currently suffering from dwindling stocks of traditional species as a result of drastic changes in their availability. As a result, fish technologists and the fish trade have turned their attention to some unconventional sources of raw material (1,2). One such species is horse mackerel (Trachurus trachurus), a medium-fat species abundant in the northeast Atlantic (3,4). Efforts have been made to utilize it in the manufacture of smoked (5), canned (6), chilled and frozen (7,8), and restructured (9) fish products. The effects of cryoprotectants and antioxidants on stability of frozen products have also been investigated (10,11).During chilled storage of fish, important changes are known to take place. Thus, significant deterioration of sensory quality and loss of nutritional value have been detected as a result of changes in the protein and lipid fractions, formation of amines (volatile and biogenic) and hypoxanthine, and changes in the physical properties of the muscle (12-14). Indeed, prolonged chilled storage has proved to have a rather negative effect if further processing is to be carried out on the fish material (15,16).Like most fish species, horse mackerel has to be kept in ice before it is consumed as such or otherwise processed. The present work was undertaken to determine the preservability of whole and filleted horse mackerel during ice storage and to evaluate the validity of fast chemical methods to assess changes in both kinds of fish products during normal trading practice.
MATERIALS AND METHODSRaw material, processing and sampling. Fresh horse mackerel (T. trachurus) were obtained 10 h after being caught; during this interval, the fish had been kept on ice. The length of the horse mackerel was in the range 18-24 cm; the weight was in the range 250-280 g. Upon arrival in our laboratory, some of the fish were carefully dressed and filleted by hand; the remainder...