Quality of pork ham as affected by locations within sample, cooking methods and storage Original Research Article

Principal component analysis (PCA) was applied to study the quality characteristics related to locations within sample, cooking methods and storage. The effects of locations, cooking methods (wet air cooking, dry air cooking and water cooking) and storage on the ham quality were elaborated by the score plot of PCA, which indicated 68% of the total variance of the quality attributes of pork ham. The result showed that the ham quality after four weeks storage was clearly lower compared with that without storage, especially in the attributes of hardness, Warner–Bratzler shear (WBS), a* and b*. The location effect on the quality attributes for dry air cooking and wet air cooking without storage was distinctly displayed, however this effect was not obvious after storage. The location effect could not be observed for water cooking with and without storage. Although there are some differences in quality attributes among these three cooking methods, the ham quality could not be clearly discriminated by PCA.