Cheese ripening: an overview of technological strategies towards process acceleration

MA. AYELÉN VÉLEZ; BERGAMINI, CARINA; WOLF IRMA VERÓNICA; GUILLERMO PERALTA; MA. CRISTINA PEROTTI

Handbook of cheese Chemistry

Royal Society of Chemistry

Año: 2023;

Cheese is one of the fermented foods characterized by its many different flavour, texture and aroma. Ripening is a crucial technological step in cheese manufacturing, constituting a cascade of biochemical events that confer unique sensory attributes, which demands long period times depending on the cheese variety. This chapter will deal with the identification of technological strategies designed to accelerate cheese ripening by means of ripening profiles’ studies and sensory characterization. Therefore, we will review the current knowledge of the principal contributions: physical treatments applied to cheese-milk or to the final product, the use of exogenous enzymes and the design of primary and adjunct starters. Particularly, we will focus on its applications on hard and semi hard cheeses, for which a slow ripening period is necessary to achieve the desired product quality.