KUDO ET AL : TEXTURE QUALITY OF PACIFIC WHITING 



British Columbia 



50° 30' 



Vancouver 



47° 30'- 



Columbia 



43° 00 - 



Eureka 



40° 30' 



36° 00' 



Monterey 



L 



50° N 



48° 



46° 



44° 



42° 



40° 



38° 



36° 



128° W 



126° 



124° 



122° 



120° 



Figure 2— Locations of the 37 hauls (black dots) of Pacific 

 whiting made by MV Nordfjord and the International North 

 Pacific Fisheries Commission (INPFC) areas surveyed in the 

 summer of 1983. 



1) by a sensory technique developed especially for 

 Pacific whiting and 2) by mechanical shear press. 

 The sensory texture evaluations were made by 

 two project personnel experienced with Pacific 

 whiting texture. Normal taste panel methods 

 could not be used in this study because each sam- 

 ple fillet was divided into six areas for sequential 

 evaluation, similar to the method described by 

 Patashnik et al. (1982). The project personnel 

 used a combination of taste and touch techniques 

 to determine hardness sensation. The touch tech- 

 nique consisted of estimating hardness or resis- 

 tance by pressing on the sample with the tip of the 

 index finger. Taste texture was determined by the 

 subjective force required to bite through the sam- 

 ple with the molar teeth. 



Texture ratings were based on a 9-point hedo- 

 nic scale (Table 1) where scores of 9 to 5 described 

 normal textures ranging from the firmness of 

 rockfish to the tenderness of typical Pacific whit- 

 ing, 4 to 3 as the softness of sole, and 2 to 1 as an 

 abnormal or mushy to liquefied texture. 



Prior to measuring sensory textures, the frozen 

 Pacific whiting halves were placed on racks in 

 trays, tempered at ambient temperature for ap- 

 proximately 2 hours or until semifrozen, covered 

 with aluminum foil, and then, depending on the 



Table 1 . — Sensory texture category based on a 9-point hedonic 



scale. 



'Considered organoleptically unacceptable as previously described by 

 Patashnik et al. (1982) and Nelson et al. (1985). 



tion with Kudoa was measured in each fillet, 

 which were divided into six inspection areas 

 (Fig. 3) as numbers of pseudocysts (i.e., infected 

 muscle fibers) per gram of tissue. Separate counts 

 were taken for each species of Kudoa and for 

 white (young) and black (old) pseudocysts. 

 The flesh texture was determined in two ways: 



Figure 3. — Selected Pacific whiting fillet areas examined for 

 cooked texture and pseudocyst intensity. 



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