Blue Crab Meat 

 Effect of Chemical Treatments on Acceptability 



By 



JURCxEN H. STRASSER and JEAN S. LENNON 



Central Engineering Laboratories, FMC Corporation, 

 1185 Coleman Avenue, Santa Clara, California 95052 



and 



FREDERICK J. KING 



National Marine Fisheries Service Technological Laboratory 

 Gloucester, Massachusetts 01930 



ABSTRACT 



Several chemical treatments were tested as adjuncts to i^reservation of blue crab 

 meat. Most of these samples were preserved by freezing but some were heat-preserved 

 or freeze-dried. In general, the dip treatments studied did not improve the quality of 

 the preserved samples. However, glazing treatments with some of these chemical so- 

 lutions appeared to improve the quality of frozen-stored samples. 



INTRODUCTION 



Meat from the blue crab (Callinectes sa- 

 pidiis) is an example of a commercially valu- 

 able product which is also highly perishable. 

 Practically all of the present output is sold 

 as fresh meat which has a shelf life of up to 

 10 days at 32° to 38° F. Although heat pasteur- 

 ization is used occasionally to extend this shelf 

 life (Byrd, 1951; Littleford, 1957), freezing 

 is considered to have a great potential useful- 

 ness in preserving the desirable qualities of 

 fresh crab meat over a period of several months 

 (Strasser, Lennon, and King, 1971) . Other re- 

 sults have led to the suggestion that chemical 

 treatments such as the ones listed below may 

 be a useful adjunct to preservation techniques 

 such as freezing, pasteurization, or even f reeze- 

 drying. 



' Portions of this report were presented at the 30th 

 Annual Meeting of the Institute of Food Technologists, 

 May 24-28, 1970. 



Monosodium glutamate is widely known as 

 a flavor enhancer in food products. It has been 

 used to glaze frozen shrimp or as a dusting 

 on shrimp just before freezing with beneficial 

 results after 10 months' storage at 0° F 

 (Norton, Tressler, Farkas, 1952). Lake her- 

 ring fillets treated with a 2^f solution of 

 ascorbic acid and then glazed with a 1% so- 

 lution of glutamate were of good quality 

 through 12 months' storage at — 5° F (Greig, 

 Emerson, and Fliehman, 1967). In contrast, 

 results of other investigations based on frozen 

 shrimp (Commercial Fisheries Review, 1952) 

 or oysters (Morton and Dyer, 1956; Oster- 

 haug and Nelson, 1957) do not suggest that 

 monosodium glutamate improves the quality of 

 these stored ])roducts. It is conceivable that 

 the variability of these results is related to 

 different concentrations of monosodium gluta- 

 mate used in these investigations since treat- 

 ment of food products with monosodium gluta- 

 mate before freezing can reduce the number of 



15 



