摘要：Long-time low-temperature sous-vide cooking of meat enables the chef to precisely and robustly reach a desired gastronomic outcome. In long-time low-temperature sous-vide cooking, time and temperature can be used as independent parameters to control the outcome. From a scientific point of view, this raises the question how different sensory properties of meat respond to time and temperature and the nature of the underlying processes. Sensory properties of beef cooked at different combinations of low temperatures and long times were found to show three different time-temperature behaviours. By means of GEneralised Multiplicative ANalysis of VAriance (GEMANOVA), the behaviour of 18 descriptors could be reduced to three common time-temperature behaviours. This resulted in three groups of sensory descriptors: group A where temperature and time dependency strongly affect descriptors in the same direction, group B where temperature strongly and time less strongly affect descriptors in opposite directions, and group C where temperature and only to a small degree time affect descriptors in the same direction. The underlying physical and chemical properties in these groups may be classified as depending on their response to time and temperature. Group A, consisting of mainly aroma and flavour descriptors but also juiciness, showed mainly kinetic nature; group B, consisting of texture descriptors (exemplified by tenderness), showed mostly kinetic nature as well; whereas group C, best exemplified by pink colour, showed little dependency on time and thus mostly reflected the effect of temperature. The results indicate that three different underlying main phenomena are responsible for the changes in the sensory properties during long-time low-temperature cooking of beef.
