Determination of the sensory attributes of a Spanish dry-cured sausage

A lexicon for describing the sensory attributes of a Spanish dry-cured sausage (salchichón) was developed in order to characterise this product. A highly trained, descriptive sensory panel generated, defined, selected and referenced the main sensory characteristic of commercial salchichón elaborated from meat of white pig. This language was not only descriptive but also discriminative. Panellists initially produced a vocabulary of 108 terms that were later modified to 15 attributes: four for appearance (luminance, presence of crust, fat/lean connection and exudate); four for odour (black pepper, lactic acid, mould and other spices); two for texture (hardness and initial juiciness) and five for flavour (black pepper aroma, mould aroma, other spices aroma, acid taste and salty taste). The Kruskal–Wallis test showed that all attributes were significantly different between samples (p < 0.001). Three different groups of Salchichones were separated by principal component analyses: group I was characterised by strong other spices smell and aroma and higher juiciness than the other groups. Salchichones from group II had a high mould smell and aroma, a notable fat/lean connection and exhibited a great amount of exudate. Salchichones from group III were characterised by an acid and salty taste.