Dairy products and milk-based food ingredients - Natural Food Additives, Ingredients and Flavourings - page 423

by churning cream with vegetable fat. The Scandinavian market also saw the early
introduction of a low fat product (strictly a soft margarine) called Lätt and Lagom,
with a fat content of 40%, based on anhydrous milkfat blended with soya oil and/
or rapeseed oil. Lätt and Lagom is made using emulsifi cation and scraped-surface
heat exchanger technology.
In the early 1980s the UK marketplace saw the introduction of Clover, a
Bregott-like product, based on cream churned with vegetable oil. To allow for the
seasonal variation in milkfat hardness, two vegetable oil ingredients were used,
one with a higher soft fat fraction (the olein fraction) and one with a higher hard
fat fraction (the stearin fraction). By varying the ratio of the two components,
changes in the hardness of the milkfat could be compensated for, yet the
spreadability of the product could be maintained constant.
In the manufacture of milkfat-vegetable fat based spreads, the vitamin content
must be equivalent to butter. Additives in the form of the fat soluble vitamins A,
D, E and K are added, as well as β -carotene which is used to mimic the characteristic
yellow colour of butter.

17.3.4 Cheese
Cheese is probably the most ubiquitous of dairy products and has become a feature
of most food cultures throughout the world. As with most of the dairy products
covered by this chapter, space prevents but a superfi cial consideration of cheese.
Over a decade ago Robinson and Wilbey (1998) suggested that the number of
different cheeses made worldwide was approaching 2000 by name. It is likely that
this number is now exceeded due to the resurgence in small-scale, specialist
cheesemakers in Europe, North America and other parts of the world. One of the
diffi culties met in counting cheeses by type is that many cheeses are 'variations on
a theme'. Two cheeses with different names and made in different places can be
almost identical in terms of ingredients, additives, processing methods and
product characteristics. So are they truly different cheeses? By defi nition, cheese
is made from milk in which lactose is fermented to lactic acid by bacteria, a curd
is precipitated by proteolytic enzymes, whey is removed, the curd is salted,
compressed and shaped, then ripened by bacteria and sometimes moulds (fungi),
to give a product of characteristic appearance, texture, fl avour and aroma.
Milk is the principal ingredient in cheesemaking. It is the source of casein that
is precipitated by the action of chymosin (and sometimes other proteolytic
enzymes) to form the cheese curd matrix in which fat globules and water droplets
are trapped. Cheese may be made from whole milk or materials derived from milk
(e.g. skimmed milk, cream and buttermilk). In cheesemaking, the cheesemilk
(which may be pasteurised or unpasteurised) is heated to an appropriate ripening
temperature at which point cheese starter, usually comprising mixed strains of
lactic acid bacteria, is added to begin the fermentation of lactose. Colouring in the
form of annatto - containing bixin, an apocarotenoid dye derived from the achiote
tree ( Bixa orellana ) - may be added to cheesemilk to give coloured products, such
as red Leicester cheese with a bold orange-red hue.

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