Quantitation of Key Tastants and Re-engineering the Taste of Parmesan Cheese

Targeted quantitation of 65 candidate taste compounds and ranking on the basis of dose-over-threshold (DoT) factors, followed by taste re-engineering and omission experiments in aqueous solution as well as in a cheese-like model matrix, led to the identification of a total of 31 key tastants (amino acids, organic acids, fatty acids, biogenic amines, and minerals) with DoT factors ≥1.0 and a total of 15 subthreshold, but kokumi-enhancing, γ-glutamyl peptides in extraordinarily high concentrations of 20468 μmol/kg. Among the γ-glutamyl peptides, γ-Glu-Gly, γ-Glu-Ala, γ-Glu-Thr, γ-Glu-Asp, γ-Glu-Lys, γ-Glu-Glu, γ-Glu-Trp, γ-Glu-Gln, and γ-Glu-His have been identified for the first time in Parmesan cheese. The excellent match of the sensory profile of the taste recombinants and the authentic cheese demonstrated the identified taste compounds to be fully sufficient to create the characteristic taste profile of the Parmesan cheese. This molecular blueprint of a Parmesan's chemosensory signature might be a useful molecular target for visualizing analytically the changes in taste profiles throughout cheese manufacturing and opens new avenues for a more scientifically directed taste improvement of cheese by tailoring manufacturing parameters ("molecular food engineering").