Effect of Meat Type, Animal Fat Type, and Cooking Temperature on Microstructural and Macroscopic Properties of Cooked Sausages

The aim of this study was to simultaneously study the effect of meat type (chicken breast and leg meat), animal fat type (selected pork back fats having a low and high degree of saturation), and cooking temperature (60 and 70 degrees C) on the microstructural and macroscopic properties (water and fat binding, texture, and pH) of cooked sausages. In sausages prepared with the most saturated pork back fat, the emulsion stability significantly decreased and the greater part of the total expressible fluid was fat, while the reverse was seen for the more unsaturated pork back fat. This was probably related to fat coalescence at the microstructural level. The cooking loss was slightly lower for sausages prepared with the most saturated pork back fat. The fat type clearly affected the hardness of the cooked sausages, irrespective of the type of meat or temperature. Thus, it can be concluded that small differences in fatty acid composition between the different pork back fats proved to have a great effect on the microstructural and macroscopic properties of the cooked sausages, in contrast with the meat type (muscle fiber type) or temperature which only had a moderate effect.