Dry aging and gender specific taste preferences

[Willy]

Thanks, Henrik. And mucho thanks to science and scientists.

[Henrik]

I'm the same. Too much dry aging is not for me. Either way, good to hear your brisket is 'en route'.

[Jerod Broussard]

I rank dry-aged (standard, no bag) with that of rosemary and ginger. They all give an undertone/aftertaste that I really don't care for.

I may try the bag on a prime rib soon.

[Troutman]

I think I fall into the category of the results obtained by men. I do like aged beef but only a little more then wet aged. For my palette any thing over 21 days gets a little too dense and jerky like. It's said that the maximum degree of tenderness is reached within 28 days of dry aging so your're really just imparting a nuttiness to the meat by continuing to age and pull out moisture.

At any rate, like you I'm dry aging a brisket right now, first time for me. Be interesting to see how a larger cut fairs after a long dry aging.

[Henrik]

It should be said that the purpose of the study was to show that dry aged (using bags like Umai/Tublin) was preferred, and also that this was a viable solution for the food industry to improve their products without resorting to full dry aging. The gender differences was more a 'side effect', or something that showed up when analyzing the test data wrt to the last few tests done with the public involved.

[Henrik]

I'm performing some dry age tests currently, and I've done my fair share of studying previous findings/expert knowledge.

In one dissertation thesis done at SLU (Swedish University of Agricultural Sciences) done by Anna Wallby in 2012 I found some interesting facts. The study itself compared dry aging in a Tublin bag (http://tub-ex.com/) compared to vacuum packed meat. The specific cut used was Longissimus Dorsi, and various tests were done on each cut that were cut into 6 pieces (to compare the center to the outer edges of the meat for example). Moisture was measured, color was analyzed in a spectral analysis machine et.c. All done by the book.

At the end of the study blind tests were performed at large shopping malls. Each cut of meat was given a random code, so nobody knew which was which. A large amount of people sampled the dry aged vs the wet aged meat and was asked to rank them according to these three criteria:

1. Which did you like best?
2. Which was most tender?
3. Which was most succulent (juicy)?

The meat was dry aged for 21 days. In total 264 people participated (42% women and 58% men. 48.1 % were between 41-65 years old. They ate beef at least once per week). Here are the results:

Tublin Vacuum No diff
Best 57.6% 37.9% 4.5%
Most tender 61.7% 31.1% 7.2%
Juiciest 61% 34.1% 4.9%

Now as you can see the dry age meat won hands down.

A second test was also done by dry aging roast beef for 14 days. In this test 129 people participated, doing either 1 or 2 comparisons, leading to 169 comparisons in total. 43.4% were men and 56.6% women. 42.6% of the testers were in the age 41-65.

NOW TO THE INTERESTING PART. If you separate the tasters' preferences from the second test (roast beef) according to gender, these were the results:

WOMEN
Tublin Vacuum
Best 67.3% 32.7%
Most tender 61.5% 38.5%
Juiciest 65.6% 34.4%

Again, dry aging won by a landslide. Now check this out:

MEN
Tublin Vacuum
Best 50.8% 49.2%
Most tender 50.9% 49.1%
Juiciest 43.8% 56.2%

The difference is so small it falls within the statistical error margin. Hence, in a double-blind test men cannot tell the difference, but women can. (When the test subjects couldn't tell any difference they were removed from the data so as not to skew the results).

The study can be found in full here (in Swedish): https://stud.epsilon.slu.se/4782/7/w...a_20121018.pdf

Now what do you think of this? Do you have any similar studies done in the US? It would be really interesting to read more on this subject.