The currently available methods for measuring water holding capacity (WHC) have been developed for raw material characterisation and have been applied to processed (cooked) muscle samples. The intrinsic shortcoming of the methods is that they do not allow rapid and uniform heating, which make them unsuitable for investigating the kinetics of cook loss and WHC. A new method and associated equipment (sample cups) for rapid and uniform heating that allows studying cook loss, water holding capacity and texture of fish samples was developed. After heating and cooling of samples in the sample cup it is feasible to gravimetrically determine the cook loss with a standard deviation within 30% of the total cook loss for minced samples. Both intact and coarsely minced muscle of farmed cod was used to investigate the abilities and limitations of the method with respect to WHC. (c) 2006 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.