Abstract: In order to prepare flavor peptides, we hydrolyzed goose meat separately with neutral protease, alkaline protease, flavorzyme, and papain. We also comparatively analyzed the degree of hydrolysis and oligopeptide content of the four enzymatic hydrolysates. Moreover, we detected the free amino acid compositions by using an automatic amino acid analyzer, and investigated the taste characteristics including umami with an electronic tongue and sensory evaluation as well. The results showed that under the following conditions: solid-to-liquid ratio (g/mL) 1:3, temperature 45 ℃, pH 7, enzyme-to-substrate ratio, 1 200 U/g protein, and incubation time 6.5 h, the highest degree of hydrolysis and oligopeptide content were obtained with papain, followed by neutral protease. The degree of hydrolysis and oligopeptide content of the neutral protease hydrolysate were 29.69% and 0.18%, respectively. In addition, the neutral protease hydrolysate had the best taste and contained a wide variety of amino acids, the most abundant ones being glutamic acid and alanine. This hydrolysate had a strong umami taste, accompanied by sourness. Therefore, we identified neutral protease as the optimum protease to prepare flavor peptides derived from goose meat.

Key words: goose, enzymatic hydrolysis, electronic tongue, amino acid, flavor peptides