Takajiro Mori

Free Amino Acid Composition of “Katsuwo-no-shiokara”

“Katsuwo-no-shiokara” is a marine food-stuff, made by ripening the skipjack viscera after the addition of a considerable amount of salt, and has a good taste together with salty and slight bitter tastes. During ripening the enzymes in viscera and some bacteria to some extent react on protein and free amino acids are gradually produced. Free amino acids which have been reported to be responsible for the good taste, but not thoroughly studied sofar, were analyzed by a microbiological method on three kinds of extracts prepared with hot water, trichloroacetic acid and tungustic acid solutions, respectively. Among three extractants used, tungustic acid was found to be most suitable for obtaining the extracts less in proteins or peptides (Table 2). Free amino acids determined, however, showed no significant difference according to the extraction method and fairly coincided in their values with those given by BLOCK et al. on the proteins in animal entrails including fish viscera (Table 3). This may suggest that the free amino acids accumulated in “Katsuwo-no-shiokara” represent the pattern of amino acids in proteins of the starting material, skipjack viscera.

Studies on the Molecular Distillation of Whale Liver Oils-III

The preparation of vitamin A concentrate by molecular distillation was tested on some whale liver oils. The yield of each distillates and its vitamin A potency were tabulated in Tab. 1-6 and the absorption curves of each fraction were shown in Fig. 1-9. The potency of vitamin A was corrected according to Osers method. In the experiments, the following results were noticable. 1. The total amount of recovered vitamin A in distillate and residue was higher than that of original oils except one case, showing the presence of kitol. The largest increase was observed in the case of sperm whale liver oil and the potency became 141.9% of original oil. 2. The absorption spectrum of distillates showed the typical curve of vitamin A. This may mean the absence or little contamination of allied substances. 3. From 5 to 18 times concentration of vitamin A was attained in the most concentrated fractions. 4. The factor of distillates became remarkably higher and their ratio became lower than those of the original oils.