70 PRELIMINARY COLD STORAGE STUDIES. 



muscles of the inner thigh, especially the color changes. The fat 

 had become opaque and deeper in color, most noticeably between the 

 leg muscles. 



No odor of putrefaction was observed, but there was a distinct 

 smell, which seems to be characteristic of cold-stored as compared 

 with fresh fowls, and which suggests acrolein. This, when chickens 

 have been long in storage, is sufficiently strong to be decidedly irrita- 

 ting to both eyes and nasal membranes. 



The viscera were in fair condition, as far as could be detected by 

 macroscopic observation, except that the walls of the intestines were 

 much thinner than is normal, and the kidneys had greatly softened. 



These chickens contain an average of 72.03 per cent of water, as 

 compared with 74.41 per cent in the fresh birds, a loss of approxi- 

 mately 2.5 per cent. It is of interest to observe that, though the fresh 

 chickens have an almost equal content of water in the light and dark 

 meat, the fowls in storage for 14 months show a more pronounced 

 drying of the dark muscle. Since the sale of chickens is, for food pur- 

 poses, exclusively by weight, and since these cold-stored birds take up 

 by soaking a large proportion of the water lost by evaporation, one 

 can readily understand the preference of the retailer to soak the fowls 

 before offering them to the public. 



The fat content, as specified in Table A, is rather in the nature of a 

 factor upon which to calculate other results than an actual represen- 

 tation of its quantity in the muscle, because the adhering fat from the 

 tissue was picked off as cleanly as possible, and only that in the indi- 

 vidual muscles was left. Such hand cleaning, however, is not abso- 

 lute, though there is a fair agreement between results. 



As one would expect from the loss of moisture, the relative amount 

 of nitrogen has slightly increased, the average for both light and dark 

 meat in the fresh fowl standing at 21.93 per cent when calculated as 

 protein and for the stored fowls 23.67. The distribution of this nitro- 

 gen among the various classes of protein and amido bodies is given in 

 Table C, page 73. The figures in ordinary type represent the per- 

 centage amounts of nitrogen; those in bold-faced type indicate the 

 relative proportion which such quantities bear to the total nitrogen, 

 and the figures in italics are the mean values of the analyses of dupli- 

 cate samples. 



The analysis of the fat of the normal chickens would indicate for it 

 a fairly constant composition. So widely do the values for the storage 

 chickens vary that it is not possible to take the mean of even dupli- 

 cate samples. But different as the results are, the trend of the 

 changes in all of the stored market chickens seems to be along definite 

 lines, namely, a lowering of the iodin number, the saponification num- 

 ber, the ester value, and the Hehner number, and a very marked 

 increase in the quantity of free acid. 



