To avoid other ingredients affecting pH, cooking loss, texture and color measurements, the model products were made only with the addition of NaCl and ESM. Data for pH, CL, hardness, springiness, redness, and lightness are given in Table , and data for all the measured TPA and color parameters are in Supplementary materials, Tables . The cooked emulsified meat models made with ESM had higher pH (p< 0.001) than those prepared without ESM (Table ). By adding ESM, pH increased from approximately 6.1 to 6.4 for all three NaCl levels. This probably due to the high pH (9.93) of ESM soaked in distilled water. It is well known that functional properties of muscle proteins depend both on ionic strength and pH . In meat systems, high pH favors water binding ability and emulsion stability . By adjusting pH to 6.36 by adding alkaline additives in finely minced meat, both cooking yield and emulsion stability were improved regardless of the initial pH of the meat . Accordingly, in the GLM model for cooking loss both NaCl and ESM, and their interaction, were highly significant (p<0.001) factors reducing CL. Emulsified meat models with 0.5% NaCl added 1.0% or 1.5% ESM had the same CL as samples with 1.0% NaCl added 0.5% ESM. The effect of ESM was greatest at 1.5% NaCl, and CL was reduced with 50% when 0.5% ESM was added and further reduced by about 20% when 1.0% or 1.5% ESM was added. TPA analysis of hardness and springiness, important quality parameters for emulsified meat products are shown in Table . The GLM model showed that both ESM and NaCl and the interaction between these factors increased springiness (p<0.001). Samples with 1.5% NaCl and ESM had the highest springiness. For hardness there was some effect of NaCl, and the samples with 1.5% NaCl and ESM had lower hardness than those without ESM. These samples also had less CL, and thus higher water content than the other samples (Table ). Liu et al. has reported that the gel strength of myosin from pork was reduced as water holding capacity (WHC) increased with increasing pH away from pI . In another study it was shown that Turkey meat gels with high pH (>6.1) and the same moisture content had both improved deformation ability and gel springiness compared to those with lower pH . That the emulsified meat models with 1.5% NaCl and ESM in our study had higher springiness and lower hardness than the other samples, can thus be explained by the fact that these samples had less CL and thus higher water content. The results shown in Table thus indicate that the differences in CL and texture properties are mainly due to differences in salt concentration, but also that ESM had some effect probably due to higher pH in samples with ESM.