Lipase Activity during Making and Ripening of Cheddar Cheese

In recent years it often has been assumed that rancidity in cheese is due to the production of lower fatty acids such as butyric acid by the action of milk lipase on natural milk fats. It first was suggested by Rice and Markley (18) that milk lipase was one of the causes of rancidity in cheese. Lane and Hammer found that: (a) typical rancid Cheddar cheese could be produced experimentally by the addition of sources of lipase, such as rennet paste (11) and pancreatin (13), to cheese milk, and (b) typical rancid Cheddar cheese could be produced experimentally by the addition of homogenized raw cream to raw skim milk as a means of milk lipase activation (12). Hood et al. Since these earlier publications, Hlynka and Hood (2, 3), Hlynka et al. A large part of this work has been carried out with commercial lipases or crude enzyme preparations as the source of experimental lipase. There is no reason to believe, however, that the lipases from these sources have properties comparable to milk lipase. Moreover, commercial lipase preparations-and crude enzyme preparations generally contain many other types of enzymes as impurities.