i.
Desirable Attributes of Cheddar Cheese
i) Colour: The
colour of Cheddar cheese should be uniform throughout. The most desired colour
is very light straw for the natural colour cheese or deep straw or yellow
orange for the medium coloured cheese. The cheese should be translucent, that
is, it should appear as if one could actually see into the cheese for a short
distance.
ii) Finish and Appearance: Cheese
with a desirable finish should show flat, parallel ends; square, even edges; an
evenly-folded, neat, close fitting bandage or wrapper free from wrinkles; a
clean, thin, uniform, close-adhering coating of paraffin, showing no blisters
or scales; and freedom from cracks, mold, rot spots, or soiled areas.
iii) Body and Texture: The
desired body and texture of cheddar cheese is that which yields a full, solid,
close-knit plug possessing smoothness, meatiness, waxiness and silkiness and
which is entirely free from gas holes. Such cheese slices well.
iv) Flavour: High
quality American Cheddar Cheese has a characteristic cheddar flavour, described
as clean, fine, nutty and pleasantly sweet.
ii.
Score Card of Cheddar Cheese
The weightage given to different
attributes is given in the score card (Table )
Score card for Cheddar Cheese |
iii.
Scoring Technique of Cheddar Cheese
i) Tempering Cheese: Cheese
should be kept in a room at 10-15.5oC
for a sufficient of time to secure a uniform temperature throughout all parts
of the cheese. A plug taken from warm cheese appears weak bodied while a plug from
cold one will appear brittle or corky. Hence, to know the true characteristics of
cheese, tempering is must before scoring.
ii) Sampling: It
is done with a cheese trier. The edges of a cheese trier are sharper than a
butter trier. A trier that cuts a larger plug has an advantage over one of
small diameter because it is much easier to detect the degree of openness and
the colour defects on the larger plug. Cheese trier is inserted in the middle
of the cheese block, rotated at 180o and
withdrawn. After drawing a plug of cheese, break the upper 2 cms and put in the
hole again from where the plug was drawn.
iii)
Sequence of observations
a) Aroma: Immediately after
withdrawing the plug of cheese from the block pass it slowly under the nose and
inhale strongly to ascertain the aroma. Then examine the remaining plug
carefully. Make mental record of all these observations.
b) Colour: Note
whether the colour is bright, clear or dull; whether it is uniform, free from
mottles or light and dark portions, or it has seams or faded areas surrounding
the mechanical holes.
c) Openness: Observe the nature
and extent of openness in the cheese. Note whether the holes are regular,
angular, rounded, large, or small. Observe also the luster or shine of their
inner surfaces and note if they are dry or wet.
d) Body and texture: Hold
the ends of the plug by the fore-fingers and the thumbs of the two hands and
bend the plug slowly into a semi-circle, observing when it breaks and the
nature of the break. Observe carefully whether the plug shows a resistance
towards bending and finally breaks suddenly, or bends one half of one third and
eventually tears apart slowly.Take one of the broken pieces between the thumb
and the fingers and work it up into a uniform mass, observing its resistance to
the pressure of the thumb and the fingers. Spread the mass thinly over the palm
of the hand with the thumb and observe whether the mass feels smooth, silky,
waxy and fine or whether it is sticky, pasty, mealy or crumbly. Reassemble the
particles, compress them into a ball, noting meanwhile the response of the
cheese to its manipulation. Also note the behaviour of cheese while biting,
chewing, mastication and swallowing.
v) Flavour: Place
the worked mass (ball) under the nose and observe the aroma.Compare this aroma
with that noted when the sample was first removed from the cheese block. Place
a small portion of the unworked plug into the mouth, chew it up to the
semi-solid state, roll into the mouth, expectorate and note the flavour. Rinse
the mouth occasionally with lukewarm saline water (1%), which cleans the mouth
satisfactorily to the previous cheese flavours.
iv.
Undesirable Attributes of Cheddar Cheese
a) Colour: Some
of the commonly found colour defects in cheese are: acid cut (bleached/faded);
atypical colour specks (white or black, rust, etc.); mottled and seamy
(uneven/wavy). White specks observed in highly ripened cheese are not
considered as a defect.
b) Finish and appearance: The
judge may look of huffed, uneven size and edges of black, blistered/cracks,
light spots, molds, rough and soiled surface defects as these may be correlated
with some body and texture and flavor defects in cheese.
c) Body defects: Corky
(dry/hard), crumbly, curdy (rubbery), greasy, pasty,spongy, weak (soft) and
short.
d) Texture defects: Mealy/grainy
(gritty), gassy, sweet curd holes and open.
e) Flavour defects: High
acid/sour, bitter, flat, moldy/yeasty, rancid, fruity, whey taint, unclean,
tallowy, etc.
No comments:
Post a Comment
Note: Only a member of this blog may post a comment.