Accelerated production of dry fermented sausage.

The scope of this paper is to review work connected with accelerated ripening of dry fermented sausages by addition of proteolytic enzymes. An overview of the following topics is given: practical sausage experiments with addition of various proteinases of bacterial origin, including data from sensory, biochemical and gc/ms analyses; biochemical and genetic characterization of the enzyme shown to be most useful in these experiments, the serine proteinase from Lactobacillus paracasei subsp. paracasei NCDO 151; experiments to transform starter cultures with the genes for production of this proteinase and proposals for future work in this field.