Epsilon Open Archive

Abstract

The objective of the present thesis was to obtain a more fundamental understanding of the development and importance of the flavour precursors, peptides and ribonucleotides on flavour development in pork. This will contribute to a better understanding of the influence of specific enzyme activities and production parameters on essential meat quality attributes. The developed approach proved to be an appropriate tool to follow post-mortem changes in the peptide profile of pork during aging and hereby make it possible to identify specific peptides with potential importance for meat quality development and final meat quality. Changes in peptide patterns during aging of pork proceeded through continuous increase and decrease of the individual peptide fractions, which refer to gradual degradation of individual proteins/peptides throughout aging. Moreover, a decreased rate in the development in the peptide pattern was induced by glycogen-reducing finishing feeding and in animals with low slaughter weight. Pan-fried pork chops showed some tendency to more pronounced bitter notes and reduced juiciness, whereas whole roasts showed a positive relationship between meaty notes and a peptidic peak containing sequenced peptides. The effect of troponin T-derived sourness-suppressing peptide was confirmed on sour odour suppression in pork at 4 days of aging. Finally, the obtained results clearly demonstrate that aging and cooking were important for the development of essential meat flavour precursors. In contrast, the difference in meat quality (pH) within the limits studied here had only negligible effect on the development of the investigated flavour precursors. The flavour enhancer inosine monophosphate was found to contribute to the sensory attributes brothy and meaty, whereas in pork its degradation product hypoxanthine was related to the sensory attribute bitter. Finally, the change in sensory attributes from brothy/meaty to bitter taking place during the storage of pork was found to coincide with the continuous degradation of inosine monophosphate to hypoxanthine.