Dimensional Changes in Meat During Cooking

Abstract

Continuous measurements of changes in meat fiber length with increasing temperature during cooking showed three zones where rates of length change are significantly different. The first (> 40°C) is attributed to myofibrillar change. The second (> 55 "C) is thought to be related to connective tissue shrinkage and shows differences with myofibrillar contraction state attributable to changes in spatial orientation of collagen fibers. The third zone (> 70 "C) is believed to be due to the interaction between myofibrillar and connective tissue contraction.Measurements of changes in cooking loss, length and cross-sectional area of samples of contracted and stretched muscle showed that cooking losses and the decrease in the cross-sectional area were greater in contracted samples, whilst length changes were greater in stretched samples. This has been attributed to differences in spatial orientation of connective tissue.1974. It has been shown that Warner Bratzler (WB) shear force values normally decrease as the cooking temperature is raised from 50 to 60 "C, unless the animals are old (Bouton and Harris, 1972a) or the muscles have cold shortened (Purchas, 1973;Bouton et al., 1974a). Heating to a temperature greater than 60" leads to an increase in shear force values (Draudt, 1972).Changes produced by various heat treatments on the length and width of isolated fragments of muscle fiber have been investigated (Hostetler and Landmann, 1968) and it has been shown that the width begins to decrease at about 45 OC and the length at about 5 5 "C. Other authors have investigated the changes in length produced by the changes in temperature in intact meat samples either directly (Davey and Gilbert, 1974) or by measuring sarcomere length (Dub6 et al., 1972;Bouton et al., 1974a;Hegarty and Allen, 1975). All these workers showed that the major changes in the fiber length of beef samples took place at temperatures above 60 "C.The present paper describes experiments designed to relate dimensional changes in meat of different myofibrillar contraction states and pH values to the cooking temperature and time.Journal of Texture Studies 7 (1976) 179-192. All Rights Resewed. Copyright 0 1976 by D. Reidel Publishing Company, Dordrecht-Holland.

Contribution of myofibrillar and connective tissue components to the Warner–Bratzler shear force of cooked beef

“…Although total collagen was represented in all the GM SF equations, indicating that collagen was a low but consistent influence as suggested by Møller (1980), the extent of collagen fibre shrinkage may not have been that important to GM SF because cooking loss was not correlated with total collagen. Therefore, cooking loss was interpreted to indicate changes occurring to muscle fibres and proteins and their hydration state more than changes occurring to collagen fibres, as supported by Beilken, Bouton, and Harris (1986) and Bouton, Harris, and Shorthose (1976).…”

Dielectric properties of salmon fillets as a function of temperature and composition

“…Similar to other muscle foods, fish muscle tends to contract upon cooking, which releases intracellular water along with soluble constituents that include both polar and ionic compounds (Hamm and Deatherage, 1960;Bouton et al, 1976;Bowers et al, 1987;Barbera and Tassone, 2006;Kong et al, 2007).…”

Thermal analysis of meat and meat products

“…They are primarily responsible for qualitative and quantitative properties of meat and must be paid due attention in any investigation. Heating causes denaturation, effecting shrinkage, juice release, discoloration and tissue hardening [30][31][32]. Further, interactions between denaturized proteins result in aggregation and gel formation.…”