RHEOLOGICAL PROPERTIES OF ULTRAFILTRATED HERBY WHITE CHEESE

Document Type : Original Article

Authors

1 Dairy Science Dept., National Research Centre, El-Behoos, Dokki, 12622 Cairo, Egypt

2 Food Science Dept., Fac. of Agric. Ain Shams Univ., Cairo, Egypt.

Abstract

Herby white cheese is considered as a new product in the Egyptian markets. Buffalo's milk retentate was used with dried spearmint or its essential oil to study the rheological characteristics of herby white cheese. Prepared cheese samples were subjected to rotational concentric rheometer to determine the shear stress, dynamic viscosity, power law model, yield stress and apparent viscosity of fresh and stored herby cheese.
  Obtained results showed that all cheese samples behave as a pseudoplastic non-Newtonian paste where the shear stress values increased with increasing the shear rate.  Stored herby cheese for four weeks reached the lowest shear stress which indicated that the presence  of essential oil enhanced the enzymatic activity during ripening and produced cheese with softer structure than the control.  Also, white cheese with dried spearmint showed higher shear stress values than control samples which indicated the effect of dried herbs on binding water in the cheese matrix and increasing the resistance of cheese curd to flow.