5.2. Cheese
5.2.1. How to improve safety without decreasing flavour diversity?
As reported by Battenfeld and Sorensen (2001), the proteolytic digestion of proteins during cheese ripening is considered to be a multi-step reaction involving the formation of rather large peptides, and their subsequent digestion into smaller peptides and free amino acids before final transformation into various volatile aroma compounds Visser (1993). The final steps in the proteolytic process are believed to result mainly from the action of proteinases and peptidases from lactic acid bacteria used as starter organisms whereas the initial proteolysis results from the action of two enzymes: