Experimental cookery

"Cooperative Meat Investigations," uses seven numbers and terms to designate the tenderness of the sample. They are: very tender, tender, moderately tender, slightly tough, tough, very tough, and extremely tough. Each judge forms his own standards from the basis of his experience. If the judge has had a complete range of qualities on which to base his standards and is consistent in adhering to them, he may become very proficient in judging comparative tenderness. Numerous mechanical devices have been devised for estimating the ten- derness of meat. The ones most commonly used at present are : ( 1 ) the shearing apparatus, which registers the number of pounds required to shear a piece of meat of a given diameter; (2) the penetrometer, with which a specially constructed needle may be used; and (3) a puncturing gage. Results of tenderness tests. There has been considerable discussion as to whether raw meat is tenderer or tougher than the same meat when cooked, which to date has not been settled. Moran and Smith, after studying the effect of ripening on tenderness of beef, say: "It is a matter of general experience amongst those accustomed to raw meat that cooked meat is tougher than raw meat." They also quote Stefansson from "The Friendly Arctic" as follows: "Cooking increases the toughness and brings out the stringiness. I have never eaten any raw meat that was noticeably tough or stringy." Black, Warner, and Wilson have reported that cooked samples were more tender than raw samples from good and medium-grade three-year- old grass-fed steers and steers fed both grain and grass. The number of steers in each lot was eight, the number of tests for raw and cooked meat was 12 and 4, respectively. Their results are given in Table 28. TABLE 28 Shearing Strength of Right and Left Raw Twelfth-Rib Samples and Left Cooked Eleventh-Rib Samples {Blacky Warner, and Wilson) Lot designation Shearing strength raw muscle lbs. Shearing strength cooked muscle lbs. Good grade, grain on grass 72.9 72.6 71.7 78.3 32 7 Good grade, grass alone 39.0 Medium grade, grain on grass 34.9 Medium grade, grass alone 38.8 Noble, Halliday, and Klaas found beef more tender, as tested by a penetrometer, when heated to 61 °C. than to 75 °C. 222 MEAT Lowe compared the penetrometer and shearing apparatus by using both tests to measure the tenderness of the longissimus dorsi of raw and cooked beef rib roasts. The roasts were used in pairs, one roast being cooked, the other left raw. Both methods indicated raw meat to be the tenderest, the rare intermediate, and the well-done the least tender. But penetration tests appear to be influenced by the density of the meat, the meat with the greatest cooking losses, i.e., the well-done, being firmest. Thus penetra- tion tests indicated no difference in meat from different animals when there was little difference in firmness but where both the shearing tests and grading score indicated a range in tenderness. The penetration depth was greater in soft raw meat than in firm cooked meat, the differences being highly significant. Shearing tests showed significant difference in the ten- derness of the longissimus dorsi from animals of varying grade and the values obtained were In agreement with the grading score.