Abstract:

This experiment was performed to improve the water-holding capacity and sensory quality of duck ham. A threelevel
orthogonal array design was applied to optimize the amounts of compound phosphate, transglutaminase (TG), and
soybean protein isolate added to duck ham on cooking loss, relaxation time of low-field nuclear magnetic resonance (LF-NMR)
and sensory evaluation. The results showed that the individual addition of compound phosphate and transglutaminase could
significantly reduce the cooking loss of duck ham (P < 0.05). The addition of transglutaminase at ratios higher than 0.5%
could significantly decrease the water-holding capacity of duck ham (P < 0.05). The orthogonal array experiments showed
that the optimal concentrations of compound phosphate, transglutaminase, and soybean protein isolate that obviously
improved the water-holding properties and sensory quality of duck ham were 0.3%, 0.4% and 4%, respectively.

Key words: duck, pressed ham, low-field nuclear magnetic resonance (LF-NMR), water-holding capacity