Abstract
The cause of sauce separation in cream stew was investigated when a mixture of 16.6 g of white sauce, 40 g of chicken thigh meat, and 33.4 g of bouillon soup was cooked under a vacuum. The sauce in the cream stew separated irrespective of the evacuation procedure during 60 min of cooking at 90°C, but this separation did not occur in a cream stew without the chicken thigh meat. The amount of protein eluted from the chicken thigh meat during cooking increased with increasing cooking time, reaching about 300 mg after cooking. The addition of 200 mg or more of bovine serum albumin or ovalbumin instead of chicken thigh meat also caused the sauce in the cream stew to separate.
These results suggest the sauce separation in the cream stew during vacuum cooking depended not on the evacuation procedure but on the sarcoplasmic protein eluted from the meat during cooking.
