COLOR OF HARD CHEESE .2. FACTORS OF INFLUENCE AND RELATION TO COMPOSITIONAL PARAMETERS

Colour properties of hard cheeses, which included mature Vorarlberger Bergkase (n = 141) as well as a set of Emmental cheeses monitored peri odically during ripening, were evaluated by tristimulus reflectance me asurements. After transformation of the tristimulus primaries into the recently proposed one-dimensional Yellowness index, colour measures w ere related to selected compositional parameters by multivariate stati stical methods. Both multiple regression and principal component regre ssion showed that cheese body colour is mainly affected by qualitative properties of the fat phase which, in turn, are heavily influenced by seasonal deviations. Additional minor sources of variation include th e total solids content as well as measures reflecting changes induced by cheese maturation.