Relationship between physicochemical properties and microbial structural distribution of Chinese-style and Salami fermented sausages

This study insightfully analyzed the relationship between chemical composition change, volatile flavor compounds (VFCs) and microbial structural distribution of Chinese-style (CFS) and Salami fermented sausages (WFS) during their fermentation processes (FP). The results showed pH, acid and peroxide values of CFS were higher than WFS during whole FP (38 d). At the end of fermentation (38 days), the pH value of CFS and WFS were 5.70 ± 0.01 and 5.43 ± 0.01, respectively. The acid value was 9.89 ± 0.38 and 6.29 ± 0.28 mg/g, respectively. The peroxide value was 0.21 ± 0.01 and 0.14 ± 0.01 g/100g, respectively. During 0–13 d, moisture contents of CFS were higher than WFS, while opposite in 14–38 d. Nitrite contents of WFS were higher than CFS. The total free-amino acid contents of CFS were significantly lower than WFS (p < 0.05). The six groups of main VFCs in the two sausages were aldehydes, acids, alcohols, esters, ketones and hydrocarbons, respectively, and the contents of ketone in CFS were higher than WFS. However, the bacterial abundance in CFS increased gradually, while that in WFS's increased firstly and then decreased. The abundances and diversities of fungi in WFS were higher than CFS. In brief, microbial structural distribution formed an obvious impact on the chemical composition quality of fermented sausages, the above results provided data support for the production improvement of Chinese-style and Salami fermented sausages.