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M. A. DRAKE¹, S. C. McIngvale, K. R. Cadwallader, and G. V. Civille. (1) Dept. Food Science, Southeast Dairy Foods Research Center, Mississippi State University, PO Box 9805, Mississippi State, MS 39762-9805

Cheddar cheese is the most popular cheese in the U.S. Much research is focused on refining and improving Cheddar cheese flavor. The lack of a standard descriptive language with identified references hinders training of panelists at different sites and communication among different research groups.

The objective of this research was to identify a descriptive language for Cheddar cheese.

Cheddar cheeses (240) representing different ages, geographical region, and fat content were collected. Cheeses were screened by four sensory experts to concentrate the samples down to 75 representative cheeses. 15 individuals from industry, academia, and government experienced with cheese tasting participated in a 3-day roundtable discussion to generate descriptive flavor terms for the Cheddar cheeses. A highly trained descriptive panel (n=11) fine-tuned the flavor terms and identified references. Principal component analysis (PCA) was conducted to identify redundant terms. A set of 10 different Cheddar cheeses was presented to the panel for evaluation with the identified lexicon.

Fourteen descriptive terms were present in most Cheddar cheeses but 10 terms were present in only a few Cheddar cheeses, indicating the possibility of using a basic list of 14 terms. It was not possible to reduce the number of descriptive terms by PCA. The panel differentiated the 10 Cheddar cheeses with low standard deviations using the developed lexicon (P < 0.05).

These results indicate that a standard sensory language for Cheddar cheese is achievable and will facilitate training and communication between different research groups in industry and academia.