AROMA OF CHEESE .2. CONTRIBUTION OF AROMA TO THE FLAVOR OF CHEDDAR CHEESE

The contribution of aroma to the flavour of Cheddar cheese has been in vestigated using 40 samples of diverse origin, including cheese made f rom raw milk. A panel of 15 trained assessors rated the cheese for 9 a roma attributes and for 10 flavour descriptors. The attributes chosen discriminated between samples. The prediction, by linear regression (L R), principal component regression (PCR) and partial least squares reg ression (PLS1), of individual flavour ratings from the aroma of the ch eese was compared. PCR and PLS1 predicted flavour with slightly greate r certainty than did LR. A further improvement in predictive power was achieved by post-processing of PCR and PLS1 scores using an artificia l neural network. Despite the success of this strategy, flavour respon ses which depend on taste - bitter, salt, sweet and sour - or trigemin al stimuli (e.g. creamy) were poorly predicted. As a result, caution s hould be exercised when the prediction of cheese flavour is based only on assessment of volatile components of the head space above the chee se. This caveat applies whether the characterisation is made by tradit ional head-space analysis, by a newly-developed 'electronic nose' or b y a human assessor.