Abstract
The relationships between the freshness of carp meat and its rheological parameters were examined, The K value was used as the freshness index of sample fish. The rheological pa-rameters obtained by the stress-relaxation experiments, which was a kind of non-destructive ex-periment, did not depend on the freshness of sample except for the high values obtained when the fish samples were at rigor mortis. The stress-relaxation experiment were unable to detect the change of structure with the decrease in freshness. The rupture strength, which could be obtained by destructive experiment, depended on the freshness of sample. The thermal properties of meat were also examined in connection with the freshness. The change of enthalpy, ΔH, decreased slightly with decreasing freshness.
