Relationships among rheological, sensory, and wear behaviors of cheeses.

Studying rheological and sensory behaviors of cheese provides structural and texture-related information that could be useful for a better understanding of the complex wear behaviors of cheese and their relationships with cheese industrial and oral processing behaviors. Thus, the objective of this study was to determine the relationships of rheological and sensory properties with cheese wear. Rheological tests including large amplitude oscillatory shear, strain sweeps at different temperatures (5, 15, and 25°C), and large-strain compression at room temperature (22 ± 2°C) were conducted for cheeses with varying fat contents (40, 50, 52, and 54% fat-in-dry-matter aged for different periods (15, 30, 45, and 60 d). Descriptive sensory analysis was used to evaluate cheese sensory texture attributes. Overall, fat content, testing temperature, and aging time had significant impact on cheese viscoelastic parameters. Higher temperature, aging time, and fat content led to lower rigidity and greater extent of nonlinear viscoelastic behaviors in the cheeses. Mass loss showed negative correlations with critical strain (γc ), critical stress (σc ), complex modulus (G* ), and fracture stress, but had positive correlations with phase angle (δ) and fracture strain. Sensory data showed that texture attributes were affected by cheese fat content and aging time and had significant correlations with mass loss at high normal force and sliding speed. This study showed that rheology and sensory data can be used to provide fundamental information on the wear behaviors of cheese and other soft materials.