Abstract
The visual color characteristics of processed meats, namely, cooked meat and cooked nitrite-cured meat, are greatly influenced by heme pigment content and its different forms. They are indicated by the three parameters of lightness, saturation and hue angle. The complicated interrelationships between the sensory color values and the heme pigment were systematized numerically according to the CIE 1976 color scale. The CIE tristimulus values were obtained as functions of heme pigment content and the functions were applied to meat color analysis. When change in pigment content occurred, variation of meat color essentially depended on the lightness, while color difference between the heme forms depended on the difference in chromaticity. The characteristic curves of lightness decreased with increasing pigment content of logarithmic scale and were sigmoid in shape and also, similar between heme forms. In the range of pigment content for actual meat, the lightness curves were indicated as straight lines, thus the variation of lightness with pigment content was suggested to be in inverse proportion to pigment content. Chromaticity on a*, b*-plane was characterized as a parabolic locus, and the positions and the curvatures were different between the heme forms. decreases in lightness were accompanied by a rise in saturation and redness of hue angle from yellow to orange angle for cooked meat and yellow to red angle for cooked nitritecured meat. Further decreases in lightness were accompanied by a decline in saturation; however, hue angle hardly varied. The color difference between heme forms increased in proportion to logarithmic pigment content in the range of actual meat and indicated a maximum value at 150ppm of hematin content.
