In the meat industry liver is an important raw material in the manufacture of sausages (liver sausages, liver paste and canned liver), not only because of its availability, but also because of its specific flavour and its good fat emulsifying and stabilizing properties. Liver is widely accepted for its typical flavour and its composition. It contains many essential substances for human nutrition.
It is astonishing that much less experiments have been carried out on liver than on meat muscle. Liver proteins differ from protein of the meat muscle particularly by their lower collagen content. Instead the liver has a higher content of carbohydrates. Glucose, ribose, fructose, the polysaccharide glycogen and their complexes like maltosyloligosaccharides are abundent in the liver. In addition, sugar-amino-acids like fructose-alanine and fructose-glycine as well as hexosamines have been detected in the liver post mortem. This composition gives rise to the assumption, that the nonenzymatic browning (MAILLARD-reaction) plays a greater role in the liver than in muscle tissue. We investigated the spectrum of amino acids of liver lyophilisates before and after heating because of the high content of heat sensitive basic amino acids in the liver according to articles dealt with the problem.