Abstract
Soft cheese fortified with ginger extract as a functional dairy food was evaluated. Buffalo's milk retentate was divided into three equal portions. One batch had no ginger extract as a control. The latter batches were fortified with extract at the rate of 1.5 or 3.0 g/kg. All batches were salted with 4% NaCl/water phase. The resultant cheese samples were divided into 2 parts; one was separately picked in salted permeate (4%), while the other was stored without pickling at 5±2°C for 6 weeks. The results revealed that cheese pickling increased the cheese proteolysis and lipolysis, and decreased pH and TVFAs. Fortification with ginger extract enhanced cheese proteolysis and TFVAs, while reduced pH value and oxidative rancidity of cheese. Physically, un-pickled soft cheese was more springy, harder, darker and more yellowish compared with pickled cheese samples. Ginger extract caused an increase in cohesiveness, whiteness and yellowish colour degree, and decrease in hardness of both pickled and un-pickled soft cheese. Ginger extract-fortified cheese enhances the growth of L. lactis ssp. lactis and L. lactis ssp. cremoris compared with control cheese. However, ginger extract exhibited the highest growth for Lactococcus strains in pickled cheese. Yeast and mould were detected only in cheese control sample after 2 weeks. Ginger extract-fortified cheese gained the highest scores for flavour, texture and overall acceptability in both pickled and un-pickled cheese, which became more acceptable to panelists than control cheese over storage.