Nature and distribution of the volatile components in the different regions of an artisanal ripened sheep cheese

Abstract

The distribution of the volatile components in four regions, Rind, Exterior, Intermediate, and Interior, of hand-made Idiazabal cheese which had been ripened for two months was studied in detail. It is proved that the headspace of this ripened sheep cheese is non-homogeneous in the different cheese regions. The Rind is the richest region in volatile compounds, followed by the Exterior region. A large number of compounds with different functional groups have their greatest abundances in the Rind with negative abundance gradients towards the interior regions. Many of these are undetectable in the Intermediate and Interior regions. Other compounds such as aldehydes having a great number of carbon atoms, and most of the acids have their greatest abundances in the Exterior region. Alcohols, ketones and esters of small size have their greatest abundances in the Intermediate region. And finally, a reduced number of compounds are distributed homogeneously in all cheese regions. The origin of the compounds, the conditions that favour their formation, their functional groups, size, shape and reactivity could be factors involved in their distribution in the cheese, which in turn is associated with the microbial ecology, chemical reactions and physical effects.

Complexity and Uniqueness of the Aromatic Profile of Smoked and Unsmoked Herreño Cheese

“…Among these, α-pinene has been found in other goat cheeses [25], and the same can be said of limonene [22,23,24]. However, it must be noticed that the presence of so a high number of terpenes and sesquiterpenes as in this Herreño cheese had not been reported previously either in goat cheeses [22,24,29] or in other types of cheese [10,11], even though this type of components were also very numerous in La Serena cheese [34].…”

“…Something similar could be said of hydrocarbons since, whereas in Herreño cheese this group of components is the most numerous (see Table 3), only a few hydrocarbons have been detected in other goat cheeses [25,33]. It is worth noticing that none of the unsaturated hydrocarbons detected in Herreño cheese has been found in other types of goat cheese, except for phytene; the presence of this latter has been reported among the volatiles of other cheeses [11].…”

“…Although acids are common cheese components [8,9,10], it could be said that Herreño cheese is particularly rich in these components, since they are very numerous and have a high number of area counts. As it is usual, those of even number of carbon atoms, especially hexanoic and octanoic, are in much higher abundance than those of uneven number of carbon atoms [11], both in the unsmoked and in the smoked cheeses.…”

“…Within this group of nitrogenated derivatives, the alkaloid β-nicotyrine is the only one whose abundance is almost the same in the smoked and in the unsmoked cheeses, so its origin would be probably different from smoke. This compound, whose presence in cheese has only been reported in Idiazabal [11], has been described as one of the alkaloids present in Nicotiana paniculata [21], a potential invading species that grows in the Canary Islands.…”

A new methodology capable of characterizing most volatile and less volatile minor edible oils components in a single chromatographic run without solvents or reagents. Detection of new components

“…They are present in foods of very different natures, such as fruits or cheese, and, in general, are characterized by pleasant odors (Guillén & Abascal, 2012). As Table 3 shows these oils contain lactones not only of small but also of high molecular weight.…”