The quality characteristics of commercially available children's steak based on principal component analysis and cluster analysis

In order to improve the quality consistency of children's steak,a comprehensive quality evaluation was conducted for children's steak samples sold on the market. A total of 51 children's steak samples were analyzed for eating quality(meat color,tenderness,pH,cooking loss,pressing loss)and nutritional quality(water content,protein content and fat content). Principal component analysis and cluster analysis were used to comprehensively evaluate the quality of commercially available children's steak samples. The results showed that majority indicators were significant correlation(p<0.05).The first and second principal components(PC1 and PC2)were identified by PCA,accounting for 30.112% and 24.236% of the total variance. Indexes related to the water retention and tenderness in the principal component PC2 load factor were higher,according to the sample on the PC2 score,the sample could be divided into 3 categories. The difference was mainly reflected on the water retention and tenderness and had little relation with other indicators. The cluster analysis results were consistent with the results of principal component analysis. The experiment showed that the quality of children's steak was different considerably. The difference was mainly reflected on the water retention and tenderness,which provided a theoretical basis for optimizing the processing technology of children's steak.