Table 1.
Sample ID, description of the sample, estimated sodium, potassium and NaCl content in the preparation of the eight cooked hams.
Each formulation varied in its amount of total salt. The reference cooked ham contained nitrite salt (Na 100 Reference). In the rest of the formulas (NaK100, NaK80, NaK60, NaK40 and NaK20) the amount of total salt content was gradually decreased to 20% of the amount of the salt in the reference cooked ham. To keep the mole ratio of sodium (Na+) and potassium (K+) constant (Na+: K+ = 3:1), all contribution of sodium and potassium from the raw material and the ingredients was added when calculation of the mole ratio.
Fig 1.
Illustration of the components of light interacting with the imaged raw material, imaged using parallel polarizers (left), crossed polarizers (middle) and the difference between the two (right).
Fig 2.
Images of a slice of ham, from supplementary Image Acquisition using parallel polarizers (left), crossed polarizers (middle) and the difference between the two (right).
Table 2.
Water holding capasity (WHC), moisture, pH, sodium, salt and expressible moisture of cooked ham prepared with different levels of salt at constant Na+: K+ mole ratio 3:1.
The reference cooked ham contained nitrite salt (Na 100 Reference). In the rest of the formulas (NaK100, NaK80, NaK60, NaK40 and NaK20) the amount of salt was gradually decreased to 20% of the amount of salt in the reference ham. Mean values ± SD (n = 3).
Table 3.
Sensory properties in the cooked hams.
Fig 3.
A, Mean subsurface reflectance b_⊥ for the hams with varying salt content. B, Mean surface reflectance b_∥−b_⊥ for the hams with varying salt content.