DRIED MEAT — WENTWORTH 563 



soak and cook it before it was usable. During the early 1940's, an 

 attempt was made to manufacture so-called "dehydrated meat," which 

 was of very good quality, but on account of the war and the employ- 

 ment of so many homemakers in defense industries, it was not possible 

 for them to obtain the time to dehydrate it and prepare it for the table. 



With further reference to enzyme action, it should be noted that 

 neither the naturally occurring enzymes found in the meat nor those 

 caused by micro-organisms can act if the water content of the meat is 

 reduced rapidly. When the percentage of water is dropped to 6 to 8, 

 enzyme action is extremely slow, and by the time it is reduced to 2 or 

 3 percent, it is stopped. Thus dehydrated meat, during this period, as 

 prepared for military and civilian personnel, had the water content 

 carried down to 3 or 4 percent as quickly as possible. 



It proved very difficult to pulverize half-dry meat evenly for stor- 

 age in the parfeches of the frontier, and both condition and flavor 

 were often affected adversely when exposed granular fragments had 

 different water contents. Since the chief part of the off-flavors 

 that come in the proteins arise from outside action after the meat is 

 ground, when it was dehydrated for wartime use the temperature was 

 raised to 165° to 170° to "pasteurize" it. There are some enzymes in 

 the flesh that, even at that temperature, may still be active, but the 

 primary purpose is to destroy vegetative forms of life that act on the 

 product through the elaboration of their own enzymes. 



In the packing house, during World War II, the meat to be dehy- 

 drated was ground just as in hamburger or sausage. One of the large 

 companies dried the product through a tunnel with a current of air 

 passing over it, and another used a louver process. A third dried the 

 ground meat in open pans and then transferred it to a vacuum. The 

 latter process took care of the final drying, as well as any undesirable 

 volatile products. 10 



The chief factor in developing the "fishy" taste in sun-dried jerky, 

 to which inexperienced people objected, came from the fats. In sun 

 and wind drying, unsaturated fatty acids tend to oxidize, producing 

 substances that contribute to their distaste. Of the unsaturated 

 fatty acids whose oxidation produces unrelished flavors, the two most 

 important are linoleic and linolenic (characteristic of linseed oil and 

 very important in the skin health of mammals). The higher the 

 temperature of the process, the more these oxidized fatty acids develop 

 and the more pronounced the "fishy" flavor. 



To most people, a degree of "fishy" taste is not so bad. The rarer 

 flavors of aged cheese and the epicurean delights of well-hung game 

 arise through similar aging, or proteolytic conditions. However, 

 during World War II housewives were not accustomed to these flavors, 



10 Byron T. Shinn to author, February 18, 1955. 



