Cottage Cheese Texture

Abstract

The firmness of cottage cheese was determined with the Kramer shear press and results reported as maximum force required to shear a 100g sample. Reproducibility of the method was satisfactory. Products from 4 plants were analyzed and significant differences in shear values and water contents between plants were observed. There was also a lack of uniformity of the products from individual plants. Shear value and water content showed a highly significant correlation (r=−.87). In spite of this the extreme variability observed makes prediction of water content from shear value impossible. The product from the plant producing cottage cheese of low shear value had a greater percentage of larger particles than the product from the plant producing cottage cheese of high shear value.