Dear Ingrid,
A (very) long time ago I performed some research on fish salting, working,
not only, but mainly with a pelagic fish specie (anchovy) that is a "cousin"
of herring. The references that may be useful to you are the following:
1. "A model to explain behaviour on fish salting"
Zugarramurdi, A. and Lupin, H.M.
Journal of Food Science (USA), 45(5):1305-1311 (1980)
2. "Study on anchovy (E. anchoita) salting II. Dynamics of the process."
(English and Spanish)
Zugarramurdi, A. and Lupin, H.M.
Latin American Journal of Chemical Engineering and Applied Chemistry,
7(1):25-38 (1977)
3. "Study on anchovy (E. anchoita) salting I. Equilibrium and concentration
profiles." (English and Spanish)
Zugarramurdi, A. and Lupin, H.M.
Latin American Journal of Chemical Engineering and Applied Chemistry, 6(2):
79-90 (1976)
As a matter of fact the size and fat layers influence the fish salting rate.
Please look at if the fish is gutted or not at the time of salting, because
salting rates (and final equilibriums) are different.
In 24 years the model we proposed (paper 1) has been tested several times by
other researchers, included in some text books, forgotten and eventually
also re-discovered by others.
After I left the lab (1981) Ms Marisa Yeannes continued working particularly
on marinated anchovy, and perhaps you could contact her (she published some
papers on the subject).
At the time I left the lab we were interested to know the conditions for
stability and safety of cured fish products. Marinated fish was a
combination multiple hurdles: Aw, pH, oxygen concentration (or additives)
and temperature. Aw and pH to control bacteria, oxygen concentration to
control moulds and temperature to (try) to control enzymes.
We develop a formula to get Aw from salt and water concentrations, that is
particularly useful at low NaCl concentrations, were noticeable variations
could exist in concentrations due to size (fat content is likely to uniform
for the same batch). You could find the paper in:
"Water activity and salt content relationship in moist salted fish products"
Lupin, H.M., Boeri, R.L. and Moschiar S.M.
Journal of Food Technology (UK) (16): 31-38 (1981)
We put all the information available on Aw and pH for the pathogens that
were known at that time (1981) and we managed to have a stability chart. We
never published it, but you could do something similar (now with much more
information).
The pending safety problem with marinated anchovy (and perhaps with herring
or other marinated small pelagic fish too) is histamine formation. The key
is always low temperature since capture. After salting and lowering pH
eliminates bacteria that can transform histidine in histamine. But, Ms
Yeannes in her research found that some (small) quantity of histamine could
be produced due to hallophilic fungi too. Then oxygen control (e.g. by
simple overflow) is also a must not only for quality reasons but for safety
reasons too.
Kind regards.
Hector M. Lupin
Senior Fishery Industry Officer (Quality Assurance)
Fish Utilization and Marketing Service
Fishery Industries Division / FAO of the UN
Viale delle Terme de Caracalla 00100 Rome Italy
Tel.: +39 06 570 56459 Fax: + 39 06 570 55188
E-mail: hector.lupin@fao.org
Please visit our website: http://www.fao.org
-----Original Message-----
From: Ingrid Undeland [mailto:iu@sik.se]
Sent: 21 April 2004 11:11
To: seafood@ucdavis.edu
Subject: water loss in marination of herring
Dear list members,
I was happy to find this e-mail list, and especially some questions/comments
about water holding in fish meat.
I wonder if any of you have some information and/or publications that
addresses water holding of fish meat (e.g. herring) during salting (3%-10%
NaCl, i.e. 05-1.7M) and marination. Marination in this case is in 7% acetic
acid (1.16 M), 14% NaCl (2.4M), pH 2.
We have found that the same salting/marination process gives very different
degrees of water uptake (in the salting) and water loss (in the subsequent
marination) depending on size of fish, its fat content etc. Has anyone done
a systematic evaluation of a similar process, and is this possibly
published?
Very much looking forward to some comments on this.
Best regards,
Ingrid Undeland, Assistant Professor
Chalmers University of Technology,
Göteborg, Sweden
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