into extracellular spaces: in this case water gain duringmarinating was
lost during cooking.
We attempted to calculate an index of volumetric variation from
weight measurements before and after marinating (Gault, 1991). However,
this procedure required wiping off the excess of marinade
adsorbed on the sample surface before weighing the treated samples.
In our case the very high surface-to-volume ratio yielded variable and
inaccurate measurements. Thus, from our weight measurements (results
not shown), only qualitative conclusions could be drawn: volumetric
increase was between 5 and 20% for all cases except for ‘pH
6.5–NaCl 2%’, in which it was about 50%. This suggests that the dimension
along the fibres slightly decreased in all cases. In order to reduce
measurement error, new experiments with thicker samples could be
performed to confirm this conclusion. However, this would imply
much longer marinating times to achieve pH equilibrium, since diffusion
is proportional to the square of the thickness