English abstract
Many fish products, such as fish burger, fish nuggets, fish fingers, fish kabab, fish sausage, and surimi could be developed with tailoring the preferences of the targeted consumers. Fish sausage could be one important product for the local and international market due to its recent demand for its beneficial effects in human health, low cost due to the use of low-grade fish species (by catch), and possibility of value addition to the fish. First the effect of starch in 8 formulations was studied by changing its level from 0-48% based on raw fish. Four sensory and four instrumental textural attributes (hardness, brittleness, adhesiveness, and firmness), and desirability (i.e, preference) of overall texture were considered in assessing the sausages. The instrumental adhesiveness and firmness were found insignificant (P>0.05), while all other attributes for sensory and instrumental showed significant (P<0.05) change with the formulation (increasing starch). All sensory attributes showed high correlation with increasing starch. However, only instrumental hardness among the other instrumental attributes showed high correlation with increasing starch level. Both instrumental and sensory hardness increased with the increase of starch content whereas brittleness decreased with the increase of starch content. Instrumental hardness was highly correlated with sensory hardness (-0.66), followed by adhesiveness (r=-0.15), firmness (0.12), and brittleness (r=0.06). This indicated that only sensory hardness could be reasonably measured by instrumental method. The formulation containing 8% starch gave best overall textural desirability. This was due to the structure forming ability of starch. In second series of experiments 6 formulations were considered considering 8% starch content with varying spices levels. The addition of spices resulted significant improvement in overall consumer acceptance (P<0.05). The optimum formulated sausage with additional spices produced in the laboratory showed higher acceptance compared to the commercial one. The color L, a, and b values of formulated and commercial sausages showed significant change during frozen storage. The change of aerobic plate count was significant for formulated sausage in the laboratory (P>0.05), whereas for commercial sausage the change was insignificant (P<0.05). The average of coliforms in formulated sausage during storage decreased from 2.2 to 0.8 MPN/g, whereas in case of the commercial sausage most probable number decreased from 52.67 to 10.2 MPN/g
