Eating quality of UK-style sausages varying in price, meat content, fat level and salt content

Thirty-six brands of pork sausage were purchased from a total of 10 retailers over a 4 months period and assessed for eating quality. The brands included 5 of the 10 most popular sausages in the UK, 4 basic, 14 standard, 10 premium and 8 healthy eating brands. The average price, meat content, fat content and salt content was £3.31/kg, 62%, 17% and 1.6%, respectively, but there were wide differences in price (£1.08/kg–£5.23/kg), meat content (32–97%), fat content (2.1–29.1%) and salt content (0.5–2.5%).Sausages were assessed by a trained sensory panel using 100 mm unstructured line scales and 14 descriptors (skin toughness, firmness, juiciness, pork flavour, fattiness, meatiness, particle size, cohesiveness, saltiness, sweet, acidic, bitter and metallic) including overall liking. The declared meat content was positively correlated with price, skin toughness, firmness, pork flavour, meatiness, particle size and perceived saltiness (r = 0.5 or better). The declared fat content was positively correlated with fattiness and sweetness (r = 0.42 or better) but not juiciness. There was no significant correlation between declared salt content and perceived saltiness.A principal component analysis showed that the first two principal components accounted for 51% of the variability in the data. Products could be separated into four quadrants according to their price, meat content, fat content and their associated eating quality attributes.