Cows’ and buffalo milk for cooked fresh cheese: preliminary comparison of the cheese-making efficiency and quality of griddled acid/heat-coagulated Paneer and rennet-coagulated Tosella/Schiz

Abstract

Milk from cows and buffaloes represents the major source of dairy products worldwide. Cheese is consumed fresh, ripened, cooked, or as recipe ingredient in many different types. Using Paneer and Tosella/Schiz model cheeses as a case study of cooked cheeses, in this short communication we evaluated the cheese yield and quality of fresh cheese before and after cooking comparing the two major dairy species (cows and buffaloes). A total of 75 model cheeses (37 Paneer and 38 Tosella/Schiz) were made. Slices of all the cheeses were cooked on a griddle at 130 °C. Milk, whey, and cheese composition traits, cheese-making efficiency traits, and cooked cheese quality traits were evaluated using a mixed model that included the fixed effects of cheese type and animal species, and their interaction, and the random effects of session, animal within species, and the residual. Higher cheese yields are obtained from the buffalo milk not only because more concentrated in nutrients, but also for the greater recovery of nutrients in cheese. There was a greater recovery of protein with the acid/heat Paneer procedure than the rennet Tosella/Schiz procedure, but we found a species × cheese type interaction for fresh cheese yield. The interaction was related mainly to the higher water retained in the Tosella/Schiz curd rather than to total solids. This led also to greater cooking weight-loss compared with Paneer. The qualitative traits of cheese were highly affected by griddling. Future research on the sensorial perception of cooked cheeses from the two major dairy species is needed to predict consumer response.

HIGHLIGHTS

• Cow and buffalo milk yield different results using different cheese-making procedures for producing cooked cheese.

• Heat/acid coagulation, like for Paneer, allows for the recovery of the majority of the fat, almost all the caseins in the curd, and about half the whey proteins.

• Mild temperature/rennet coagulation procedure, like for Tosella/Schiz, increases water retention in fresh cheese and weight loss during cooking.

• The cheese-making procedures developed for the milk of one species cannot be transferred directly to the milk of another species because of an interaction between species and the cheese-making procedure.

Keywords:

• Cow and buffalo milk
• fresh cooked cheese
• cheese yield
• cheese quality
• cheese cooking losses

Acknowledgments

The authors would like to thank the Fondazione Cariparo for providing financial support to Nageshvar Patel to pursue his PhD at DAFNAE, University of Padova, and Luciano Magro, Giorgia Secchi, and Qianlin Ni (DAFNAE, University of Padova, Legnaro, Padova, Italy) for technical support. A special mention goes to dott.ssa Tatiana Dallo of the Lattebusche S.c.a. company for the support during the development of the laboratory model cheese-making procedure for Tosella/Schiz cheese.

Ethical approval

Animal Care and Use Committee approval was not obtained for this study because the milk samples were obtained during the regular evening milking. The authors did not have direct control over the care of the animals included in this study.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Data availability statement

The results and analyses presented in this paper are freely available upon request.

Additional information

Funding

This work was supported by Fondazione Cassa di Risparmio di Padova e Rovigo.