SENSORIAL TEXTURE ATTRIBUTES OF "RAS"CHEESE IN RELATION TO ITS PHYSICO-CHEMICAL PROPERTIES AS COMPARED WITH SOME MARKET IMPORTED CHEESES AT DIFFERENT AGES

Abstract

Sensorial textural of cheese could be affected more or less by different physico-chemical changes happened in the viscoelastic systems. Correlations between sensorial textural and physico-chemical properties of Egyptian "Ras" cheese in comparison with some market imported cheeses at different ages of ripening were studied. Two groups of Egyptian "Ras" cheese being mild (~4 months old) and over ripened (~12month old) were compared with three imported Australian cheese varieties being Cheddar (~6 months old), Edam (~4 months old) and Gouda (~3 months old). Seven expert judges, identified 7 textural mouth terms and 3 textural hand terms for sensory evaluation of all cheese types. Ras cheese (mild or ripened) showed higher firmness and salt/water phase (S/W), but were lower in moisture content, water activity (aw) than imported cheese types. Ras cheese characterized as lower in: degree of hand rate of recovery, cohesiveness, adhesiveness, mass smoothness and residual smoothness, while as higher in: degree of breakdown and first bite fracturability in the mouth. Differentiations in texture parameters between different cheese types were affected to far extent by S/W phase, aw, moisture content as well as water soluble nitrogen (WSN) related to total protein. In addition, most of sensory terms were directly correlated with each others.