The salt contents of salmon meat linearly increased from 0.8% raw meat to 4.4% after 14-day's salting process at 15 wt% NaCl addition. From the DSC analysis, it became clear that the denaturation of the meat mainly occurred on myosin by salting. As the denaturation proceeds, the enthalpy change, ΔH (mcal/mg of meat) of 0.999 rapidly decreased to 0.646 for 1-day salting and then gradually decreased to 0.567 for a 14-day salting. Elastic modulus (E), viscosity, and rupture strength of meat decreased by 1-day salting, but they increased during salting. The temperature dependence of dynamic rigidity (G'), of the salmon meat pastes, suggests that the gelation occurred at ca. 58°C. The phenomena of disintegration (“himodori”) were observed on the smples excepts those of 1st day and after 10 days. The reason that has been considered is said to be due to the network structure of salt soluble proteins that were not yet formed in the 1st day's sample, and that polymerization of heavy chains of myosin proceeded in the samples after 10 days.
