Studies in Meat Tenderness. I. Sensory and Objective Assessments of Tenderness

SUMMARY As an introduction to a long‐term investigation of meat tenderness, seven series of comparisons were made between sensory and objective evaluations of the tenderness of roasted lamb rib‐loins. Using a tenderometer based on that of Volodkevich, high coefficients of correlation (0.68‐0.94) were found despite the occasional occurrence of large variations in tenderness within single muscles and the detection of slight panel fluctuation in three of the more prolonged series. Sensory assessment of tenderness was shown to be more nearly linearly related to either the reciprocal or the square root of shear force than to shear force itself.