OBJECTIVE AND SUBJECTIVE ASSESSMENT OF AUSTRALIAN SAUSAGES

From individual Free Choice Sensory Profiles taste panelists produced a consensus profile which described the texture of Australian sausages in terms of nine attributes. Principal components analysis showed the first three accounted for over 95% of sensory variation. The first component contained primarily mechanical attributes and accounted for 73.8%. The second related mostly to properties of particles and juiciness. Greasiness and skin contribution appeared in the third component. Correlations between mechanical measurements and sensory attributes were not significantly affected by sample testing temperature or sausage skin. A compression method was the best indicator of mechanical breakdown characteristics in the sensory profile.