THE INFLUENCE OF THE CASEIN-FAT RATIO IN SHEEPS MILK ON THE CHEMICAL-COMPOSITION AND SENSORY PROPERTIES OF NABULSI CHEESE

The organoleptic properties of nabulsi cheese, which is widely popular in Jordan, tend to vary from one market sample to the next, and diffe rences in the chemical composition of the cheese milk were suspected. Deliberately altering the casein :fat ratios in Awassi sheep's milk in fluenced the texture of, and hence consumer reaction to, nabulsi chees es made from the different milks. However, the use of a starter cultur e including Lactococcus lactis and L cremoris, rather than the natural microflora of the milk/dairy, produced cheeses that were perceived to be too harsh in flavour. It was concluded that the between-batch vari ability observed in the marketplace was likely to be introduced by bot h the uncontrolled nature of the bacterial populations in the milk and compositional differences.