Food Microbiology, 1989, 6, 195

Book Review

W. J. Stadelman, V. M. Olson, G. A. Shemwell, and S. Pasch Egg and Poultry-Meat Processing VCH Verlagsgesellschaft, Weinheim, FRG 150 Deutsches Mark

Authors Stadelman, Olson, Shemwell and Pasch point out that they had three reasons for writing ‘Egg and Poultry- Meat Processing’: to assist the value- added processor; to encourage product developers to incorporate eggs and poultry in their products; and to provide a reference book for upper undergradu- ates and new graduate students. Their success is somewhat marred by an uneven balance of detailed information -sometimes too much and at other times, too little.

The book starts with a brief introduction to product development strategies, often the topic of entire books. Although the coverage here is rather brief and somewhat superficial, the authors do include a number of figures of potential scoresheets for evaluating products.

The heart of the book discusses both eggs and meat. For some reason the authors have chosen to divide the section on eggs into four chapters: nutrition, shell egg production and processing, conversion of shell eggs to egg products and manufactured products; they use only three for poultry. The informative nutrition sections contain a fine article by Cathy McCharen of the Egg Nutrition Center dealing with ‘Nutrition and Cholesterol.’

The authors are inconsistent about including recipes in the processing

sections, leaving the reader unclear as to expectation from section to section. Periodically, excellent literature summaries are presented.

The section on poultry meat contains insufficient detail on mechanical deboning, particularly with respect to the advantages and disadvantages of various processing equipment and handling regimes. A highly detailed report on machines currently under development for whole meat-deboning is included further along in the text-with excessive British jargon. The very next chapter contains a full. listing of all approved US poultry meat products with few details about other countries.

The final chapter on ‘History, trivia and folklore’ is a valiant attempt to cover a lot of ground. Unfortunately, the lack of focus and the attempts at humor that most non-American readers would not understand detracts from the worth of this section.

The audience that will probably benefit most from this book are the junior food technologists in industry who need to learn more about potential options for new product development. A few sections would be worthy of a library reserve assignment on campus. People already in the processing industry are familiar with most of the material but might appreciate finding it all in one place.

Joe M. Regenstein Department of Poultry and Aviun

Sciences and Institute of Food Science Cornell University

Ithaca, NY 14853-5601

0740-0020/89/030195 + 01 $03.00/O 0 1989 Academic Press Limited