Sensory properties linked to fat content and tasting temperature in cottage cheese

There is a growing interest in developing low-fat products in response to increased consumer demand. However, fat reduction often leads to low sensory acceptability by consumers. The identification of the sensory characteristics impacted by the reduction of fat is a first step to choose the most appropriate strategy to offset the adverse effects of a fat reduction. This work examined the impact of fat content and tasting temperature on the sensory characteristics of cottage cheese. A conventional sensory profile was conducted to characterize seven cottage cheeses at two tasting temperatures (7 and 15 A degrees C). Five products differed based on their fat content (0, 1, 3, 8, and 11%), while the last two contained 1% fat and were flavored by the addition of 0.07 and 0.13% cream flavor. Differences among the cottage cheeses varying in fat content were based on a range of differences related to aroma (mainly a cream aroma), taste (mainly bitterness), trigeminal sensation (astringency), and texture (greasy film). The tasting temperature did not impact taste, aroma, or astringency. However, thickness was strongly modified by tasting temperature, regardless of the fat content of the different cottage cheeses. Moreover, this study suggests that fattiness is difficult to define and that this descriptor could be advantageously replaced by greasy film which was shown to be highly reliable in discriminating between various fat contents in cottage cheese.