The effect of oven temperature, dry-roasting,and breed on the eating quality of beef was determined by sensory and objective methods. Two adjacent standing rib and two adjacent chuck roasts of prime, choice, and good grades from animals of Hereford, Shorthorn, and Charolais breeding were dry-roasted. Control roasts (9-12th ribs) were cooked at 325 F. Experimental roasts (6-8th rib and two chucks) were assigned an oven temperature of 325 or 250 F at random. All roasts were allowed to reach ah internal temperature of 155 F as recorded on a potentiometer. Tenderness, as determined by a Warner-Bratzler shear, was greater in roasts cooked in the 325 F oven. The amount of press fluid and the percentage of total cooking loss due to drip was greater in the 325 F oven. The panel of judges preferred the flavor of meat which was dry roasted to that cooked by a moist heat method. An effect of breed on eating quality was shown: meat from animals of Charolais breeding rated highest by the taste panel for tenderness, juiciness, and flavor. One group of samples from a Shorthorn sire was consistently low in the three factors scored. There was a high correlation between objective and sensory methods of evaluation for tenderness and juiciness. Correlations were high between the taste panel scores for tenderness and flavor and also for juiciness and flavor. Flavor and backfat thickness were shown to be closely related.

Thesis (M. Tech. - Engineering: Electrical, Department Electronic Engineering, Faculty of Engineering and Technology)--Vaal University of Technology. / Curing of materials in order to obtain different properties has been a practice for many years. New developments in composite materials increase the need to control certain variables during the curing process. One very significant variable is temperature. Temperature control by itself is an old practice, however when the need for repeatedly controlling the process accurately over long periods of time arises, a system is required that outperforms normal manual control. One of the aspects within such a system that needs to be considered is the ability to replicate the temperatures within an oven which were originally used for a specific material’s curing profile. This means that a curing profile would need to be defined, saved for later and finally be interpreted correctly by the controlling system. Different control methods were simulated to enable the system to control the temperature which has been defined by literature. This dissertation introduces a variation on the standard control methods and shows improved results. Switching the oven on and off in order to increase or decrease internal oven temperature seems simple, but can cause switching devices to decrease their operational life span, if not designed carefully. A combination switch was introduced which harnesses the advantages of two very common switching devices to form an improved combination switch. Software for the personal computer environment, as well as software for the embedded environment were developed and formed a control system that produced acceptable results for temperature control. Accuracies of 98% and more were achieved and found to be acceptable according to standard engineering control practices. An accurate temperature profile controller was designed, simulated and built in order to control the temperature inside a specific curing oven which, in turn, determined the curing properties of specific materials. The overall results were satisfactory which lead to achieving the objectives outlined in this dissertation.