THE MEASUREMENT OF EMULSIFYING CAPACITY BY ELECTRICAL RESISTANCE

Abstract

SUMMARY— A method was developed to objectively measure the emulsifying capacity (ECJ of meat and fish protein extracts by electrical resistance. The method of Swift et al. (1967) was modified to deliver oil at a constinuous rate at the point of blender agitation, thus forming an emulsion for testing the validity of the electrical resistance method. This modification reduced the variance of the end‐point determination within samples. The precision of end‐point determinations by electrical resistance was equivalent to the modified visual method, and had the advantages of being objective, having a finite end‐point and providing a continuous record of the emulsion during formation and collapse. The EC of fresh muscle slurry extracts from fish were higher than those from beef and pork. However, the EC of fresh muscle supernatant extracts ranked from highest to lowest are beef, fish and pork, respectively. In all cases, the EC of supernatant and fresh muscle extracts was higher than the slurry and frozen muscle extracts, respectively.