Flavor in Milk and Its Products.
Flavor:
How tested?
Good flavor sells milk, cream, butter and cheese; poor flavor condemns them. Flavor is that indescribable something, which, in good dairy products, appeals pleasantly to our senses, but often passes unnoticed because so familiar; in poor products it is equally indescribable, but more often characterized in vigorous language, when “frowzy” butter, “garlicy” milk, “bitter” cream or “strong” cheese present their offensive odors and tastes. The ordinary consumer calls flavor the “taste” of the article which tickles his palate; but the expert knows that the nerves of smell play the larger part, and he depends for his judgment largely upon a trained nose. Hence we see the butter judge or cheese scorer pass the trier beneath his nostrils with deep-drawn breath and meditative study of the aroma which arises. Smells, however, cannot be measured in degrees or separated into their elements by the spectroscope; therefore we have to depend upon general terms, often differing with the different experts, in our discussion of flavor; yet we have some well-marked classes which serve as a basis for reference.
Faults of
flavor
classified.
We can separate the faulty flavors into classes by their origin. The minute particles thrown off by dairy products, whose impact upon tongue or nostrils give rise to taste or smell, may come (1) from compounds in the food of the cow or developed in her body (2) from matters, other than germs, taken up by the milk while it stands in poorly-ventilated stables or rooms reeking with foul smells, or (3) from substances which are the direct or indirect result of the activity of living organisms in the milk.
Odors of the first class will be most noticeable while the milk is warm from the cow and will not increase with time. They are really far less common than dairymen generally believe and may be avoided almost entirely by careful feeding. Garlic, turnips, cabbage and such “fragrant” edibles will, of course, taint the milk if they are fed within a few hours before milking; but when fed soon after the cows are milked, the volatile oils to which these odors are due will generally disappear from the animal’s system before the next morning or evening.
Too often odors of the second class are assigned to the first, and the old cow takes the blame for man’s fault; as milk very readily and quickly takes up smells and tastes from its surroundings. When the owner delivers milk to the factory and is told that it “smells bad,” he forgets that he or his men let it stand in the uncleaned stable to draw in the “cowy” and worse odors, while the cows were being fed and some other chores attended to; or that they poured it into pails that lacked a little of perfect sweetness; and he immediately says; “I’ve got to stop feeding silage.” “The cows ate some cabbage trimmings last night,” or, “Someone forgot to close the rye-field gate.”
Odors of these two classes, due to volatile compounds in the milk, are of most importance in the milk and cream trade, as the faults largely disappear in making butter and cheese. Thorough æration is often helpful in the removal of such flavors.
Odors of the third class, except in some very rare cases where the udder itself is the seat of colonies of bacteria, are not observed in freshly-drawn milk. The bacteria, molds and yeasts which cause them must have a chance to develop and to set up chemical changes in the milk; and this rarely occurs to any great extent within 12 hours from the time the milk is drawn. A high temperature, however, is favorable to growth of these low forms of plant life; so in warm weather milk faults are common. In butter-making, and in cheese-making, also, the heat often used to ripen the cream and the high temperature at which the milk is held in “setting” and “cooking” the curd, furnish conditions very favorable to the germs present and they develop with great rapidity. In their growth part of the milk is used for food and in its breaking down into simpler compounds the aromatic substances which make flavor, good or bad, are formed.
The flavor of good milk and cream, then, is an inherent quality due to the normal constituents of the milk; the flavors of butter, both good and bad, except that due to the fat and to odors absorbed by the milk, are held to be the result of bacterial action; the fundamental flavors of cheese are probably due to chemical decomposition, started by unorganized ferments known as enzyms; joined with which are other flavors marking the individual cheeses, which are probably due to bacteria; and it has recently been found that in some cases yeasts have been the cause of bad flavor.