Oven arrangement and a method for cooking initially uncooked, whole muscle meat food products

An oven arrangement for cooking initially uncooked, whole muscle meat food products to obtain cooked products having a minimum final core temperature, the oven arrangement comprising:

• an oven housing having oven climate devices;
• conveyor for receiving uncooked food products and conveying with a conveying speed the food products through the oven housing to obtain the cooked food products;
• a scanner arrangement provided upstream of the oven housing for scanning uncooked food products, configured to obtain food product thickness data of the food products;
• a controller using maximum food product thickness obtained from the scanner arrangement to control conveying speed and oven climate devices to obtain the cooked products;
• wherein the scanner arrangement is furthermore configured to obtain fibre orientation data of the whole muscle food products;
• and in that a predictor module is provided, which is adapted to be fed with both the food product thickness data and the fibre orientation data, and which is configured to predict on the basis of the fibre orientation data and food product thickness data an effective maximum food product thickness resulting from fibre denaturation taking place in an initial cooking stage within the oven;
• and wherein the controller uses the effective maximum food product thickness obtained from the predictor module to control conveying speed and oven climate devices.