Quality of Cucumbers Commercially Fermented in Calcium Chloride Brine without Sodium Salts

Table 1

Fermentation chemistry for cucumber pickles commercially produced in either 1.03 M NaCl recycled brine or 100 mM CaCl₂ brine.

Processing stage	Fermentation brine	Number of fermentation processes	Terminal	CaCl2	NaCl	Lactic acid	Acetic acid
Fermented	NaCl	27		37.9 ± 4.6	1088 ± 64
Fermented	CaCl2	41		85.2 ± 6.9	-
Desalted	NaCl	20		26.7 ± 3.3	739 ± 29
Desalted	CaCl2	36		31.4 ± 4.9	-
Finished product	NaCl	14	3.40 ± 0.08	24.8 ± 1.9	240 ± 176	45.4 ± 13.5	105.4 ± 36.7
Finished product	CaCl2	26	3.35 ± 0.05	28.4 ± 6.7	240 ± 44	33.7 ± 8.4	114 ± 36.7

Means for different treatments followed by different letters are significant at ; CaCl₂ concentrations were estimated from Ca²⁺ titrations and include natural cucumber calcium concentrations of 3.0 ± 0.8 mM; NaCl concentrations were estimated from Fajan’s chloride titrations with the chloride contributed by CaCl₂ subtracted from the total chloride concentration.