Sensory profile and consumer perception of meat products enriched with EPA and DHA using fish oil microcapsules

Summary The sensory properties of cooked and dry‐cured sausages enriched with monolayered and multilayered fish oil microcapsules, as EPA and DHA vehicles, were investigated, by using quantitative descriptive analysis (QDA), temporal dominance of sensations (TDS) and hedonic and purchase intent tests. The enrichment effect was slight, mainly influencing flavour attributes, which led to lower scores in the QDA and lower dominance rate in TDS. The effect on acceptability and purchase intent depends on the meat product, being more noticeable in cooked sausages. It is worth noting the impact of the label information that increased the scores of hedonic and purchase intent tests. All these results may point out the use of fish oil microcapsules, the adjustment of the content of salt and flavour additives and the inclusion of accurate label information to enrich meat products. The importance of combining different sensory techniques to achieve a complete sensory evaluation of meat products has also been highlighted in the present study.