Flavor and appearance of whole shell eggs made safe with ozone pasteurization.

Raw eggs are a potential health hazard and a new federally approved process uses ozone to maintain freshness while ensuring safety. The impact of an ozone process on the flavor, color, and shell integrity of eggs must be known for market acceptance. The visual perception and consumer acceptance of full commercial scale ozone-pasteurized eggs are reported, using a degree of liking test and a Just-About-Right analysis. Instrumental analysis of albumen turbidity, yolk color, and Haugh Units correlate with human perception. Visual tests reveal that ozone-pasteurized eggs were equivalent to thermally pasteurized eggs in attributes such as appearance, spread, and cloudiness. They were equivalent to untreated eggs in yolk height, yellowness, and appeal. There were no differences in taste among all egg treatments for measures of aroma, flavor, texture and overall liking. Ozone-pasteurized eggs have the same appeal as raw eggs, and can be cooked without flavor loss. This promising new ozone process maintains good sensory quality relative to thermal processing.