Relationships between the sensory characteristics, neutral volatile composition and gross composition of ten cheese varieties

Relationships between the odour, flavour and texture sensory attributes and the neutral volatile composition and gross composition of ten varieties of cheese were determined. Sensory evaluation was carried out by fifteen trained assessors who used a vocabulary of nine odour, twenty-one flavour and ten texture terms. Volatile compounds were isolated in a bench top purge and trap model system, trapped on Tenax-TA and analysed using gas chromatography coupled with mass spectrometry. Gross composition was measured using standard methods. Results of Principal Components Analysis on the sensory data showed that the first seven Principal Components significantly discriminated between cheeses and accounted for 86% of the variation. Partial Least Squares regression was used to determine the relationship between significant sensory attributes and thirty identified volatile compounds and the gross compositional data. Six odour and eleven flavour attributes were positively correlated with subsets of volatile compounds and gross compositional data. Seven texture attributes were shown to be correlated to subsets of gross compositional measurements. Overall, the present study illustrated that individual cheese flavour and texture attributes are the result of complex interactions of specific volatile compounds and compositional variables.