A note on the relationships between cured-cooked and dry-cured ham processing yields

Right and left hams from 353 pigs slaughtered at around 100 kg body weight were processed into cured-cooked hams and dry-cured hams, respectively. Weights and yields at various stages of each process, carcass lean content and fresh meat quality traits were registered. Technological yield of cured-cooked processing (saleable cooked ham weight/defatted-deboned fresh ham weight) was more closely correlated to ultimate pH (r=0.51, p<0.001) than to carcass leanness (r=-0.13, p<0.05) whereas the reverse situation -r=0.15 (p<0.01) and r=-0.62 (p<0.001), respectively--was found for technological yield of dry-cured processing (saleable dry ham weight/trimmed fresh ham weight). The correlation between the two technological yields was significantly positive but of fairly moderate magnitude (r=0.36). The correlation between the overall yields (saleable processed ham weight/entire fresh ham weight) of the two processes revealed to be very close to zero (r=-0.01).