Muscle traits for long matured dried meats

The distinctive flavour of aged pork products is a complex mix of taste, smell and even touch. To meet increasing consumer's preference for ethnic foods or foods addressing linkage with specified geographic origin or complying with traditional manufacturing and breeding guidelines, efforts should be made to encourage selection of processing techniques and raw materials targeting desired end product qualities. Thanks to research carried out with sensory analysis and chemical and physical characterisation of raw and matured pork, as well as breeding and genetics, improved knowledge is now available relating dried meat properties to raw matter or manufacturing. The achievement of the distinctive taste and texture properties of aged products through genetics (animal selection for the enhancement or the removal of some muscle traits), breeding (effect of diet and slaughtering age on pork properties) with reference to current findings about this type of products is discussed.