Chemical and Microbiological Comparison of Ready-To-Eat, Dry Fermented Sausages From Northern Portugal
Citation (APA 7)
Faria, A. S., Bonilla-Luque, O. M., Carvalho, L., Fernandes, N., Ángel Prieto, M., Cadavez, V., & Gonzales-Barron, U. (2024). Chemical and Microbiological Comparison of Ready-To-Eat, Dry Fermented Sausages From Northern Portugal. 16th AgroStat Conference (AgroStat 2024) (AGROSTAT2024), Bragança, Portugal. Zenodo. https://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.14787895
Abstract
Chouriço de carne is a typical Portuguese ready-to-eat dry fermented sausage, produced with wine-marinated pork meat, fat, and seasonings. It’s still traditionally produced in certain rural areas of Northern Portugal, where artisanal producers rely on effective spontaneous fermentation and generational knowledge about smoking and drying to suppress pathogen development, ensuring the microbial safety and desired organoleptic properties of chouriço.The aim of this study was to evaluate selected physicochemical and microbiological properties of chouriço de carne traditionally produced in northern Portugal, and to understand the associations between these attributes. Water activity (aw), moisture, pH, ash, protein, fat, carbohydrates, counts of mesophiles, lactic acid bacteria (LAB), Staphylococcus aureus, Clostridium spp., as well as detection of Listeria spp. and Salmonella spp., were determined for 14 producers, 5 sausages per each. The data generated by these variables was subjected to principal component analysis (PCA), cluster analysis and factor analysis.PCA analysis generated three components which accounted for 60% of data variation: PC1 (26%) positively correlated to moisture and protein and negatively to fat and pH, describes sausages with more meat in formulation; PC2 (19.3%) highly correlated to LAB, characterizes a longer/rapid fermentation; and PC3 (14.5%), which associated negatively to ash, and positively to aw, and to a lesser extent, to Clostridium spp. and S. aureus, defines sausages with poorer hygiene. Cluster analysis identified three groups within the quality maps: i) chouriços with high moisture, more meat and more acidic; ii) sausages with low moisture, more fat, and potential hygiene faults; and iii) chouriços with very low moisture, more meat, and less acidic. Slightly different to PCA, factor analysis yielded a varimax-rotated three-factor analysis that explained 65% of the data; PC1 (23.5%) depicts chouriços with low pH but high moisture, while PC2 (20,8%) describes sausages with more meat in formulation, and PC3 (20,6%) longer or rapid fermentation. Overall, the results present great variability between producers, highlighting the difference in recipes, ingredients and manufacture practices employed amongst enterprises, which contribute to a rich landscape, but the variance between sausages of the same producer accentuates the need for process standardization and better microbiological control.