*3.8. Sensory Evaluation*

The results of sensory evaluation for the replacement of pork fat with AC in sausages are shown in Figure 1. Replacing pork fat with 25% AC in sausages caused no significant (*p* > 0.05) change in sensory characteristics, indicating that a small amount of AC had no obvious effect on the sausage. With regard to appearance, odor, and taste, AC50 and AC75 showed a higher score, compared to the control. It may be due to AC having a unique flavor and reducing the greasy taste of sausages, which was very popular among the sensory evaluation team. This result is consistent with the report by [11] that the addition of fried *Pleaurotus eryngii* as a substitution for pork back fat-enriched these free amino acids and improved the taste and flavor properties of sausages. By contrast, AC100 got the lowest score in appearance, odor, and taste. Additionally, texture scores of replacement group were decreased significantly with the increase of AC, because AC made the sausage a soft texture. That may be characteristic of AC is different from pork fat. These results were in line with the TPA observed by instrumental measurements (Table 4). The highest score of overall acceptability in all the samples was AC75, followed by AC50, AC25, control, and AC100, indicating that excessive AC would reduce the sensory quality of the sausage. In general, all sausage groups were judged as acceptable (Overall acceptability > 7), and the best one was the replacement of pork fat with 75% AC.

### **4. Conclusions**

The substitution of pork fat with *Auricularia cornea* (AC) in sausages was found to be a viable alternative in this study. AC improved the protein, moisture, and ash contents, especially isoleucine, leucine, proline, palmitic, palmitoleic, oleic, and arachidonic acids in the sausages. In addition, cooking loss and water holding capacity were also improved in comparison with the control. Meanwhile, AC significantly reduced the fat (12.61%–87.56%) and energy (5.76%–56.40%) levels of the sausages. Furthermore, the sausages demonstrated the yellowness, whiteness, lightness, and soft texture on account of AC. From the sensory opinior, the best sausage formulation was 75% of pork fat replacement with AC. The results shown that AC could be possibility used as healthier food to decrease the content of pork fat in sausages.

**Author Contributions:** Conceptualization, Y.F.; methodology and writing—original draft preparation, L.Z.; formal analysis, M.C.; data curation, K.W.; investigation, G.J.; writing—review and editing, X.L.; supervision, S.D.; project administration and funding acquisition, L.W. All authors have read and agreed to the published version of the manuscript.

**Funding:** The authors are grateful to the Plan of Science and Technology Development of Jilin Province of China (No. 20210202066NC) and the Opening Project of Engineering Research Center of Edible and Medicinal Fungi (Ministry of Education), Jilin Agricultural University (No. JJJW2021001).

**Institutional Review Board Statement:** Not applicable.

**Informed Consent Statement:** Not applicable.

**Data Availability Statement:** Data are contained within the current manuscript.

**Conflicts of Interest:** The authors declare no conflict of interest.

### **References**


MDPI St. Alban-Anlage 66 4052 Basel Switzerland www.mdpi.com

*Coatings* Editorial Office E-mail: coatings@mdpi.com www.mdpi.com/journal/coatings

Disclaimer/Publisher's Note: The statements, opinions and data contained in all publications are solely those of the individual author(s) and contributor(s) and not of MDPI and/or the editor(s). MDPI and/or the editor(s) disclaim responsibility for any injury to people or property resulting from any ideas, methods, instructions or products referred to in the content.

Academic Open Access Publishing

mdpi.com ISBN 978-3-0365-9179-7