Influence of endpoint temperature, humidity and cold storage on mechanical and sensory properties of smoked chicken sausage.

This study was conducted to evaluate the influence of relative humidity, endpoint temperature and period of cold storage on some mechanical and sensory properties of smoked chicken sausage. Weight changes, cooking losses and emulsifying capacity of the processed samples were determined. During heat processing and smoking, the internal temperature of samples increased more rapidly at a relative humidity of 70 or 80% than at 40%, due to the enhanced heat transfer coefficient of the condensing steam and the temperature differential between the surface and center temperatures of the sausage samples. Consequently, processing time was shorter, but the weight of samples increased by about 1.5% during the first 15 min of heat processing at 97C. As the relative humidity in the smokehouse increased from 40 to 80%, both the weight loss, emulsifying capacity, compression and penetration stresses decreased from 11.1 to 7.5%, 28.2 to 27.4 mL oil/100 mg protein, 2.14 to 1.68kg/cm2 and 1.36 to 1.15 kg/cm2, respectively, while the cooking losses decreased from 11.1 to 7.5% when the samples were held at an endpoint temperature of 70C for the same period. The cold storage results showed that both the compression and penetration stresses decreased as the period of storage increased or as the humidity in the smokehouse increased. The sensory scores indicated that all the sausage samples were acceptable within 4 weeks of frozen storage. Firmness and color scores decreased as humidity increased; however, as the period of storage increased, scores for firmness increased, and color, juiciness and flavor scores decreased.