Lab 6 Milk Proteins- Delilah Bisase

Date: November 6, 2015

Purpose: To understand how different milks react with the rennin coagulant in the cheese
making process for cottage and ricotta cheeses.
Experimental Procedure: Prepared cottage and ricotta cheese recipes with the milk variations
of whole milk, 2% milk, non-fat milk, and soy milk.
Results:
Cottage cheese whey volumes
Type of milk

Whey volume (mL)

Curd flavor

Curd tenderness

Whole milk
2% milk

363
301

Bland
Mild

Non-fat milk
Soy milk

341
N/A

Watery, bland
N/A

Soft, dissolves
Like soft tofu,
delicate
Rubbery
N/A

Ricotta Evaluation
Type of milk
Whole milk

Flavor
Fresh, light, funky

2% milk
Non-fat milk

Bland
Slightly bitter

Tenderness
Some stickiness, lowest
moisture, best texture, even
crumble
Dense, spongy, some crumble
Sticks to teeth
Dense, compacted, no
crumble
N/A
Soft, like applesauce, mushy

Almond
N/A
Soy ricotta
Can really taste the soy
Discussion:
The cheese making process essentially takes the stable, colloidal, fat in liquid dispersion
of milk and intentionally disrupts the emulsion by making the fat precipitate out of the liquid.
The precipitates of casein micelles are referred to as curds, while the remaining liquid is the
whey. The casein micelles (alpha, beta, and kappa) of milk are mainly held together by

hydrophobic forces, however; they are unable to completely coagulate because the kappa-casein
contains a carbohydrate strand which gives it a polar attribute, effectively acting as the middle
man to make the casein micelle stable in the liquid phase through steric stabilization (Brady,
2015). Three mechanisms exist to disrupt this emulsion, they are enzyme hydrolysis, acid
hydrolysis, and binding by tannins (Batten, 2015). Cottage cheese made with rennin exemplifies
enzyme hydrolysis and ricotta cheese made with vinegar demonstrates acid hydrolysis.

Lab 6 Milk Proteins- Delilah Bisase

Rennin is an enzyme used in the cheese making process to create the curdling of the
cheese. It causes aggregation of the casein proteins by cleavage of the glycoprotein kappacaseins carbohydrate strand. Loss of this strand transforms it from hydrophilic to hydrophobic;
thus making it unstable and causing the casein molecules to clump together and precipitate out of
the milk, what is called curdling. It is this process that causes the gelation. The whey contains
water soluble vitamins, minerals, proteins, and lactose. It is interesting to note here that persons
who are lactose intolerant are affected only by whey but not by casein as it does not contain
lactose. Whey is a major cheese production by product and has a variety of uses in the food
industry. It provides the basis for commercially sold whey protein powder, and its lactoglobulin protein allows is to act as a carrier for hydrophobic molecules in aqueous
formulations (Brady, 2015). In the cottage cheese recipe, the step of cutting the curd lets more
whey separate out. I think the smaller the cubes of curd are cut, the drier and harder the cheese
will be because it will have less moisture, and visa versa. Subjectively, I noticed that as the fat
content of the milk decreased the tenderness of the cottage cheese got increasingly rubberier.
Since rennin is an enzyme that acts on glycoproteins, the soy milk cottage cheese recipe created
no curdling and resulted in no cheese production as the soy milk contains no kappa-casein
glycoproteins for the rennin to act on.
The ricotta cheese recipe uses vinegar as a coagulant, and works by bringing the milk
caseins to their isoelectric point. At this point the caseins will have a neutral net charge and no
longer bind with the charged water molecules, thereby leading to precipitation out of solution in
curds. The soy milk created a cheese while the almond milk did not coagulate and thus did not
produce a cheese. The ricotta cheeses as a whole had more flavor in comparison to the cottage
cheeses which all tasted fairly bland. The fat content of the milk in the ricotta cheeses also
majorly impacted the texture. As the fat content of the milk decreased, the cheeses became
stickier, denser, and had less crumble. Specifically, the non-fat milk ricotta when chewed
formed a thin, sticky film that quickly dissolved on the teeth. This characteristic could be
attributed to the -lactoglobulin content, as Brady describes it to have a cross-linking ability
which allows it to be used commercially to form thin-film edible coatings. Brady does not go
into detail of specific products, but a plausible use could be the coating on medicinal pills/
tablets.

Lab 6 Milk Proteins- Delilah Bisase

References
Batten, C. (2015). Proteins, Eggs, and Dairy [PowerPoint slides]. San Francisco State University
Brady, J.W. (2013). Introductory Food Chemistry. Hong Kong: Cornell University Press