*4.2. Sensorial Quality*

Sensory evaluation started developing with the growth of industry and processed food [62]. Sensory characteristics are crucial in the development of new food products [63] and influence consumer acceptance both before purchase (visual appearance) and at the time of consumption (odor and flavor). Because of this, sensory analysis are one of the most important methods in judging food quality [64]. Previous studies [52,65–70] have reported these parameters in ham and indicated the importance of flavor in the overall quality of dry-cured ham. However, the present study is the first to our knowledge to determine the degree of satisfaction of cured ham spiced with saffron. The addition of spices provide new tastes, colors and aromas to food that even gives culinary identity [71], owing to the changes in the composition of volatile compounds [72] that affect the hedonic characteristics [73] and may affect the acceptance of new products [74]. On the other hand, spices could improve the quality of meat products due to their preservatives properties [75].

The addition of saffron provoked a grea<sup>t</sup> stability during time of study in each group. In this work, all groups were accepted by consumers. It is evident that the panelists preferred the group with the lowest concentration of saffron (Figure 2). Other studies [52,76] that indicated the acceptability of dry-cured ham during storage obtained lower scores with storage time, owing to increasing rancid odor and flavor in vacuum-packed ham [50,51,77]. Despite the fact the shelf life assigned to Spanish dry-cured ham is approximately one year, this is significantly reduced when the dry-cured ham is sliced and vacuum-packaged [51,78]. The decrease of flavor, odor and even color is in accordance with the reduction of shelf life of ham, not due to microbiological problems, but because of the decrease of sensorial quality [51]. This rancidity is usually associated with a decrease in pH [79] and especially in products rich in unsaturated fatty acids [80] such as ham. This may have occurred in the present study (note that we did not analyze lipid oxidation) and affect the scores of the panelists. However, these scores did not vary significantly during the experimental period, a finding that may be attributed to the addition of saffron, which may have masked the negative effect of lipid oxidation or decelerate it owing to its antioxidant power [81]. Significant differences due to saffron concentration could be attributed that safranal, the

major aromatic component of saffron, changes over time increasing its concentration [82,83] affecting to hedonic characteristics.

### *4.3. Transfer of Aromatic Compounds from Saffron*

Because safranal is one of the major components of saffron [84] and represents 72% of the flavoring composition of saffron [85,86], its content was determined to assess the transfer of aromatic compounds from the spice to the ham. Such saffron compounds were not found in the control group ham samples, which indicates that dry-cured ham and saffron do not have common aromatics. The amount of safranal contained in dry-cured ham was much lower (10−7) than the safranal content present in the spice itself [85]. This gives a subtle saffron flavor to the dry-cured ham without masking its origin flavor but enhancing it [28].

In all groups, there is a rapid decrease of 7 to 14 days, consistent with that detected by the panelists as shown in Table 2, and a different increase at each group to 60 days. These findings are consistent with previous findings [23,85] that indicated that safranal concentration is higher in saffron stored longer than a month because of formation of safranal from crocetin esters and picrocrocin during storage [28]. Previous studies reported that the main compounds of saffron change over time [82,83].

The method used to determine the transfer [22] only analyses the safranal in the surface layer of the slice. Therefore, as fat is a lipophilic medium that absorbs apolar substances [85], it causes a decrease in the safranal content of the such layers. However, during storage, the generation and the absorption of safranal compete, being the absorption process faster than the generation process. It could be due to the fact that the internal layers that have absorbed safranal became saturated with the compound generated after 28 days. This could occupy the surface layers, recovering the initial values of 7 days. It is shown in the evolution of A and C and the trend in B groups. Moreover, this is in agreemen<sup>t</sup> with the significant differences between groups at day 14 (with lower concentration of safranal) and 60 days (with higher concentration of safranal).

With decreasing concentration of saffron used to season the ham, the sensory scores improved, and the correlation changed from negative in group A to positive in group C (*r* = 0.30 with visual appearance, *r* = 0.34 with flavor, and *r* = 0.65 (*p* < 0.05) with odor). This agrees with the highest organoleptic scores obtained by group C samples (Table 2). Correlation between color parameters agrees with the previous results explained in Table 1, due to the change of the main saffron compounds during storage. Correlation of safranal content with pH (always negative) and with the color coordinates were not significant in any group.
