Abstract
Fish meat emulsion was prepared from egg-yolk, very low lipid sardine meat ground or suspended in weak alkaline solution, salad oil, and vinegar. The effect of added water on the flow properties and oil droplet size was investigated. In the ground-meat emulsion at an oil ratio of 1.1 to sardine meat irrespective of water ratio between 0 and 0.3, the hysteresis loop area of the flow curve was small and the small sized oil droplets were uniformly dispersed. When the oil ratio was increased to 1.6, the flow property changed within 1 day of storage. In the suspended-meat emulsion irrespective of the oil ratio of 1.1 or 1.6, the loop area was large with large oil droplets at water ratios of 0 and 0.1, and the area became smaller with smaller oil droplets at water ratios of 0.2 and 0.3. The emulsion with a water ratio of 0.1 was in the intermediate state between the irreversible shear breakdown and the thixotropy. At an oil ratio of 1.1 with this water ratio, both very large and moderately large loop areas were observed. At an oil ratio of 1.6, both the shear thinning flow and the shear thickening ones were observed during irreversible breakdown. The smaller oil droplets were dispersed more uniformly in the sample which showed a moderately large loop area or the shear thickening type breakdown.
