Impact of serving time on the microbiological and physicochemical quality of food served during wedding banquet

Abstract

The aim of the present work is to investigate the microbiological quality and safety of three main dishes served during Malay wedding banquets. The two selected Malay wedding banquets were each prepared by commercial catering services and ‘rewang’ activity (a group of voluntary cooks from the local community) in Selangor. Three types of the dish (chicken, vegetable and cooked rice) were sampled from both banquets and analysed for Total Plate Count (TPC), Total Coliform, Escherichia coli, Staphylococcus aureus, Bacillus cereus, Salmonella, and Listeria monocytogenes. The dish samples were taken at 0, 1, 2, 3 and 4 hrs after serving. For catering, the TPC for chicken, vegetable and cooked rice at 0 hr were 6.39, 6.21 and 7.13 log CFU/g respectively. None of the samples were contaminated with Salmonella spp. or Listeria spp. The temperature of foods during the serving times averaged between 30 to 50°C which was conducive for bacterial proliferation.