Effect of component quality on sensory characteristics of a fish soup.

The foodservice industry is a highly competitive branch where customer satisfaction and loyalty is dependent on the price and the quality of the food. To improve cost competitiveness, instead of fresh ingredients, more preprocessed items are used as components in dishes. This may impair the perceived product quality, and thus potentially decrease customer satisfaction. The effects of the component quality on a single dish were tested by serving fish soup in a consumer study (n = 205), and by serving the dish to an in-house panel (n = 17) using a modified check-all-that-apply method. The variable used for the quality of the fish and vegetable components was a previously unprocessed/fresh component being compared to a processed. This study showed that in a modular dish, each component had an effect on the perceived quality of the dish. When replacing a preprocessed component with a fresh one, the perceived pleasantness increased to a higher level. The fish as the main dish component had the largest effect on the quality. Fresh fish has the ability to enhance the taste of soup, even with frozen vegetables. The results from this study indicate that the effect of freshness can also be perceived in the cooked product.

Concentration of Umami Compounds in Pork Meat and Cooking Juice with Different Cooking Times and Temperatures.

This study examined the concentrations of umami compounds in pork loins cooked at 3 different temperatures and 3 different lengths of cooking times. The pork loins were cooked with the sous vide technique. The free amino acids (FAAs), glutamic acid and aspartic acid; the 5'-nucleotides, inosine-5'-monophosphate (IMP) and adenosine-5'-monophosphate (AMP); and corresponding nucleoside inosine of the cooked meat and its released juice were determined by high-performance liquid chromatography. Under the experimental conditions used, the cooking temperature played a more important role than the cooking time in the concentration of the analyzed compounds. The amino acid concentrations in the meat did not remain constant under these experimental conditions. The most notable effect observed was that of the cooking temperature and the higher amino acid concentrations in the released juice of meat cooked at 80 °C compared with 60 and 70 °C. This is most likely due to the heat induced hydrolysis of proteins and peptides releasing water soluble FAAs from the meat into the cooking juice. In this experiment, the cooking time and temperature had no influence on the IMP concentrations observed. However, the AMP concentrations increased with the increasing temperature and time. This suggests that the choice of time and temperature in sous vide cooking affects the nucleotide concentration of pork meat. The Sous vide technique proved to be a good technique to preserve the cooking juice and the results presented here show that cooking juice is rich in umami compounds, which can be used to provide a savory or brothy taste.