Tensile tests and Warner-Bratzler (WB) shear tests were performed to study the mechanicalproperties of beef and their relationship with WB tenderness measurement. Four bovine muscles,biceps femoris (BF), longissimus dorsi (LD), semimembranosus (SM), and semitendinosus (ST),were used. The experiment was conducted in a randomized complete block design where muscletype, cooking status, and aging were treatments and animals as blocks. Results showed that rawmuscles exhibited all or some of the elastic, stress-yielding, and work-hardening behaviors in tension.The work-hardening behavior generally disappeared in cooked beef Cooking resulted in a significant(P < 0.05) increase in the maximum tensile force, ranging from 65 for BF muscle to 144 for SMmuscle. The strain energy at break did not change significantly for BE LD, and SM muscles aftercooking but increased significantly for ST muscle. Muscle type had a considerable effect on therelationship between tensile properties and WB shear measurements. The correlation between WBshear value and the maximum tensile force for cooked beef was significant for LD and SM muscles (r= 0.65 and r = 0.48, respectively) and was not for the other two muscles. There was also a significantcorrelation (r = 0.64) between WB shear value of cooked beef and the maximum tensile force of rawbeef for LD muscle.
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