Lipolysis and volatile compounds in low-fat Kefalograviera-type cheese made with commercial special starter cultures

Two commercially available starter culture systems, Alp DIP and a mixture of Alp DIP D and Joghurt V1, were compared with a regular starter culture, CH-1, for their effects on lipolysis and volatile compounds in a low-fat (9.5%), high moisture (49.6%) Kefalograviera-type cheese during aging. A full-fat control Kefalograviera cheese (30.8% fat, 37.8% moisture) was also made with the regular starter culture. The results indicated that the experimental low-fat cheeses had a higher, but not significantly, total FFA content than the control low-fat cheese and a significantly lower level than the full-fat cheese. The experimental cheeses had also significantly higher levels of acetone at 90 days and acetic acid, diacetyl and acetoin at 180 days than the control low-fat cheese which had significantly higher levels of butan-2-ol and butan-2-one than the former cheeses at both sampling ages. (C) 2003 Elsevier Science Ltd. All rights reserved.