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This review summarizes the recent developments in understanding of the relationships between the diet of animals and the sensory quality of dairy products. Feeding dairy cattle with maize silage by comparison with hay or grass silage leads to whiter and firmer cheeses and butter and sometimes to differences in flavour. Major differences in sensory characteristics were observed between cheeses made with milk produced by cows on winter diets (based on hay and grass silage) or turned out to pasture in the spring. Conversely, preserving grass as silage, by comparison with hay, has no major effect on cheese sensory characteristics, except on colour, the cheese being yellower with grass silage. Several recent experiments have shown a significant effect of grass botanical composition on cheese texture and flavour. These effects are due to the presence in milk of specific molecules directly introduced by feeding (carotenes, terpenes) or produced by the animals (plasmin, fatty acids) under the effect of specific diets. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

An attempt at classifying the influence of different characteristics of milk and cheesemaking on the rheological properties of Abondance cheese is presented. Abondance is a traditional farmhouse French hard cheese with protected denomination of origin (PDO). Thirty-nine cheeses made from unpasteurized cows' milk were sampled. Spline partial least squares regression was used to relate milk properties and cheesemaking practices to rheological properties of the six-month-old cheeses. These properties were the deformability modulus and the strain and stress at fracture measured by compression. Milk properties and technological practices had overall the same degree of relationship with the rheological properties investigated: plasminogen-derived activity in milk and mineral-protein equilibrium, on the one hand, and brining and resting, on the other hand. However, acidification kinetics and 1-d pH, which result from both milk properties and technological practices, showed the strongest relationships with rheological characteristics. Factors that were most appropriate for modelling Abondance rheological properties are discussed.

A study was undertaken to compare the chemical and sensory characteristics of Abondance cheeses made with milk from animals grazing areas within the same highland pasture, but with different predominant plants. Nine cheeses made during the last 3 d of three successive 7 d periods were evaluated. The animals grazed on the southern side of the highland pasture during the first period (15-21 June), on the northern side during the second period (22-29 June) and returned to the southern side for the third period (30 June-6 July). The gross composition of the cheeses did not vary between periods. 'North' cheeses contained more plasmin, gamma-casein, alpha s1-I-casein and water-soluble N than 'south' cheeses. Both sensory and instrumental measurements indicated that north cheeses were less firm, stickier and more easily fractured than south cheeses. North cheeses were also more salty, bitter and persistent. Their overall aroma was more intense and they had more intense sour, burnt, toasted, fermented vegetable and sweat aromas, but less intense toffee, exotic fruit and acid milk aromas. The texture differences noted between the cheeses from milk produced on the two areas may come from differences in primary proteolysis, partly due to different amounts of plasmin and plasminogen in milk and in cheeses. The aroma differences were related to differences in volatile compounds. Some compounds had a microbial origin, while some others may have come from the pasture.