## 4 Discussion
Conversely, smoking meat can cause potentially harmful compounds from the smoke, such as polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons (PAHs), to be deposited in the products, but the extent of PAH contamination can be greatly reduced by controlling the intensity and conditions of the smoking process [60]. In the present study, smoking was carried out under controlled conditions in the smokehouse and the amount of smoke used was reduced by half in the LSH group. This reduced smoking had no negative effect on the physicochemical and colour properties of the ham but seemed to improve the texture profile, as evidenced by the lower hardness of the BF in the LSH. Furthermore, intramuscular lipid oxidation was not affected by the reduced smoking. In fact, in all the analysed harms, the TBARS levels were quite low (\(\sim\)0.70 mg MDA/kg), indicating a possible underestimation of MDA levels that may occur in metals cured with nitrite curing salt, due to the nitridation of MDA blocking the reaction with TBA [61]. Conversely, the higher intake of potent antioxidants such as \(\alpha\)-tocopherol and carotenes [55; 61] from acorns, grass and other natural feedstuffs that are available to free-range pigs may also contribute to the higher oxidative stability of the harms [35]. Regarding the antimicrobial effect of the smoking process, no microbiological analyses were performed in the present study. However, we found no significant differences in the physicochemical parameters such as \(\mathrm{a_{w}}\) and pH values between the LSH and SH, which could, at least indirectly, indicate similar microbial control in both process types. As for the volatile profile, phenols originating from smoke were the second most abundant VOCs after aldehydes. Phenols and methoxyphenols are of great importance to the creation of the smoke flavour, due to their woody, pungent, burnt, ashy, petroleum-like and smoky notes, which can already be sensed at low concentrations of 1-10 mg/kg [62]. Hence, their presence is a unique characteristic of smoked and dry-cured harms such as Croatian _Dalnantiski prstut_ and _Drniski prstut_[23; 59; 63] or other smoke-cured meat products [64]. As expected, the reduction in smoking resulted in a significant decrease in smoke-derived phenolic compounds, which was the most significant difference in the volatile profiles established between the smoking processes. However, this was not detected by sensory profiling, as the panellists responded similarly to the \"smoke intensity\" attribute of all harms, which is likely due to the low threshold of the phenolic compounds present [50]. The contents of phenols in this study were generally lower than in dry-cured harms that were smoked using the traditional smoking method, without a smoke chamber [50], which may also diminish the difference in perceived smoke intensity between the lightly smoked and standard harms. Conversely, the sensory profiling corroborates the results of the texture profile analysis of the BF muscle, which was assessed by the panellists as softer, moister and more soluble in lightly smoked harms, implying the beneficial effect of reduced smoking on the perceived texture of the dry-cured ham. Finally, it should be pointed out that the present study has potential limitations, due to the small sample size that was analysed. This was particularly evident in the profile of the volatiles, where large effect sizes (Hedge's \(g>0.8\)) indicate the different mean values of several individual and total VOCs between the experimental and control harms; however, this was mostly not confirmed by the analysis of variance due to the small sample size. Therefore, further research with a larger sample size is needed to confirm the observed effects.