Abstract
The pink color of the salted Alaska Pollack roe, “Tarako”, which is cured with either nicotinamide and ascorbate or nicotinic acid and ascorbate is stable under roe product is markedly unstable and fades rapidly accompanying development of a dark hue during storage in a refrigerator.
The color fixation of the salted Alaska pollack roe with imidazole was studies, based on zhe finding that imidazole is capable of forming a fairly stable red pigment, a ferrihemochrome, with hematin and denatured myoglobin. The fresh roe, when salted with 12% NaCl, 0.5% imidazole, and 0.3% ascorbate, rapidly developed the stable red color which was presumed, to be due to the formation of imidazole ferrihemochrome. The fixed color was red with some orange tints, slightly differing from the pink color developed by means of means of nitrite.
Similar results were obtained with histidine menthyl ester and histidylhistidine both of which are capable of forming ferrihemochromes.
