Effect of Sodium Chloride and Milk Preacidification on Serum Phase and Chemical Composition of Soft White Pickled Cheese

The objective of the present work was to study the effect of milk salting and preacidificationwithcitricoraceticacid on residual coagulant activity, expressible serum and chemical composition of soft white cheese. Also, to produce soft white cheese from unsalted milk with characteristics comparable to those of cheese made from salted milk. The results showed that cheese made from salted milk contained the lowest activity of residual coagulant, while cheese made from milk preacidifiedwithcitricacidcontainedthehighestactivity.Cheesemoistureandsolubleproteinsinexpressible serum were lower in cheese made from unsalted milk than in that made from salted milk. The expressible serum decreased during pickling in all treatments. PreacidificationwithcitricacidtopH6increasedthemoisturecontent in cheese and reduced the amount of expressible serum. Reverse-Phase High Performance Liquid Chromatography (RP-HPLC) analysis showed that the peptides in the expressible serum from salted milk-cheese were present at higher relative concentrations than in that from the unsalted milk-cheese. The late-eluting peptides of 90 days old cheese were higher in preacidifiedmilk-cheesecomparedtothatinnonepreacidifiedmilk-cheese