Sensory profile of farmed fallow deer dry-cured meat

Among the wide variety of European dry meat products, the most famous ones are made from pork, but other interesting products are obtained from meat of different species: i.e., the “bresaola”, from bovine, horse, etc. Deer meat and meat products are interesting in this picture, since they include the high degree of consumers’ appreciation for dried products, and the growing interest for food having an “environment friendly” image. The production of dry-cured hams from deer has a small and commercially highly valuable market niche. The raw meat derives especially from hunting, although in the last decades the use of meat from farmed animals, which assures a more constant supply and a higher hygienic quality, has become an interesting reality.The raw meat from de-boned thighs of 32 male fallow deer of either 18 or 30 months of age fed at pasture, with or without supplementary feeding, was used to verify the effect of the age and feeding regime on the sensory properties of dry-cured deer meat. All thighs were cured in a factory specialized in game processing. During eight sections, 11 trained assessors judged the four types of dry-cured meat, supplied in a balanced sequence, by evaluating, with 100mm linear scales, 14 descriptors: marbling, dryness, fallow deer odour (o.), cheese o., milk o., goat o., sweet aromatic, sour taste (t.), sweet t., metallic hardness, cohesiveness, elasticity, granularity.GPA showed a good differentiation of the meat types: the 1st dimension (46% total variability explained), correlated with marbling, dryness, hardness and sweet aromatic, helped to separate mainly the two tested ages, whereas along the 2nd dimension (30% total variability explained) the meats were separated mainly according to the diet through granularity, elasticity, cohesiveness and sweet aromatic.