Food or edible material: processes – compositions – and products – Fermentation processes – Of milk or milk product
Reexamination Certificate
2001-08-08
2004-06-15
Wong, Leslie (Department: 1761)
Food or edible material: processes, compositions, and products
Fermentation processes
Of milk or milk product
C426S034000, C426S038000, C426S040000, C426S042000, C426S043000, C426S582000
Reexamination Certificate
active
06749873
ABSTRACT:
BACKGROUND OF THE INVENTION
1. Technical Field of the Invention
The present invention relates to a cheese manufacturing method, particularly to a cheese manufacturing method in which a cheese yield is enhanced by elaborately utilizing a milk whey protein (hereinafter referred to simply as a whey protein), or the whey protein and transglutaminase (hereinafter abbreviated as TG)
2. Prior Art
It is considered that a cheese originated when human beings began to raise livestock, that is, around 6,000 B.C. Generally, the cheese is roughly classified into a processed cheese and a natural cheese. The natural cheese is classified into ripen cheeses such as a super-hard cheese, hard cheese, semi-hard cheese, and soft cheese, and fresh cheeses subjected to no ripening process.
The cheese is manufactured according to a very exquisite and sophisticated principle. First, manufacturing of the ripen natural cheese will be described.
Examples of a milk as a raw material (material milk) include milks of a cow, goat, sheep, buffalo, reindeer, donkey, camel, and the like, and these are used not only in a whole milk but also in a semi-skim milk, skim milk, and the like. As well known, a milk coagulating enzyme called chymosin (or rennet) is added to the material milk, or a so-called cheese starter, and the like are used, if necessary or as desired, in the material milk to form a coagulated material (cheese curd) (milk coagulating treatment). A major protein in the material milk is casein, and is formed of &agr;s1-, &agr;s2-, &bgr;- and &kgr;-casein. The casein forms a micelle structure and exists in the material milk. The &kgr;-casein is distributed in the surface of a casein micelle, and contributes to stabilization of the micelle. Chymosin is an enzyme which cuts &kgr;-casein by a specific site, and through the cutting, peptide (called glycomacropeptide (GMP)) on a C terminal end which is exposed on the surface of the casein micelle and which is highly hydrophilic is separated from &kgr;-casein. GMP exists as a part of the whey protein after separated. After the cutting, remaining &kgr;-casein is called para-&kgr;-casein, and is highly hydrophobic peptide. Therefore, after chymosin acts on &kgr;-casein, the highly hydrophobic para-&kgr;-casein is distributed in the surface of the casein micelle, and the casein micelle becomes unstable. As a result, the casein coalesces, and forms a so-called cheese curd.
Subsequently, the cheese curd is finely cut, and a whey protein is separated (primary whey). Subsequently, the separated cheese curd is cleaned with a warm water, excessive lactose is removed and additionally the remaining whey protein is removed (secondary whey). Subsequently, the cheese curd is collected, and squeezed. After the curd is squeezed for a given time, salt is added to the curd. The curd is subjected to a ripening process, ripened for a given period, and formed into the natural cheese.
Additionally, as described above, the whey protein separated after the cheese curd is formed is a byproduct in the cheese manufacturing. The whey protein is mainly constituted of &bgr;-lactoglobulin, &agr;-lactoalbumin, serum albumin, IgG and GMP. At present, a part of the whey protein is used for manufacturing various foods and for feeding animals. A high nutritive value of the whey protein has been known long (Barth and Behnke; Nahrung, vol. 41, pp. 2 to 21, 1997), and effective use of the whey is considered to be also industrially very advantageous.
Moreover, as described above, in the cheese manufacturing, casein in a solid content of the material milk excluding whey components (lactose, whey protein, and the like) is a main cheese constituting component, and all solid contents of the material milk do not form the cheese. Therefore, in the industrial manufacturing of the cheese, it goes without saying that it is desirable from viewpoints of costs and effective utilization of a milk resource to be able to manufacture as much cheese as possible from a constant amount of the material milk. Moreover, there is another advantage that a product can be supplied to a consumer inexpensively by establishing a high-yield cheese manufacturing method. However, for a conventional cheese manufacturing technique, under existing circumstances, it cannot necessarily be said that a yield of the cheese curd is high. Enhancement of the yield of the cheese curd means that a casein fraction coagulated through chymosin treatment is quantitatively increased. That is, it is a technical problem to incorporate much whey protein in the cheese curd during preparation of the cheese curd.
Attempts have been made to reduce the whey protein discharged into the whey as much as possible and enhance the yield of the cheese curd. For example, a method of concentrating a volume of the material milk to about ⅓ by ultrafiltration and using the material milk to manufacture the cheese is described in U.S. Pat. No. 4,205,090. PCT National Publication No. 501810/1982 describes a method of selectively concentrating the material milk by ultrafiltration to enhance an ion strength in the material milk, fermenting the material milk, removing water from the material milk, and using this raw material to manufacture the cheese. Furthermore, it is described in Japanese Patent Application Laid-Open No. 308756/1990 that when the whey secondarily produced during manufacturing of the cheese is concentrated, and the concentrated whey protein and concentrated material milk are used to manufacture the cheese, the obtained cheese curd contains a high concentration of the whey protein, and the whey protein as a resulting byproduct can effectively be utilized.
However, in these techniques, the material milk or the reused whey needs to be preprocessed by the ultrafiltration, and it is difficult to say that this is an industrially convenient method. Moreover, for the cheese manufacturing method in which the material milk treated by the ultrafiltration is used, it is known that with a short-term ripened cheese, a product quality is not affected. However, with a long-term ripened cheese, protein decomposition or cheese flavor generation is sometimes inhibited. This may supposedly be explained from facts that in the cheese rich in an unmodified whey protein the whey protein itself is not easily decomposed and the whey protein inhibits decomposition of casein by protease (Jameson and Lelierve; Bulletin of the IDF, vol. 313, pp. 3 to 8, 1996, deKoning et al.; Neth. Milk Dairy Journal, vol. 35, pp. 35 to 46, 1981, Bech; International Dairy Journal, vol. 3, pp. 329 to 342, 1993). In conclusion, it cannot be said that the existing cheese manufacturing technique by concentration of the material milk sufficiently satisfies the consumer in quality implications such as a flavor and texture.
In order to enhance the yield of the cheese curd, it is a technical problem to effectively incorporate the whey protein discharged in the whey into the coagulated casein by rennet treatment (coagulating treatment), that is, into the cheese curd, which has been described above. As one example of solution means of this problem, transglutaminase (TG) as a protein crosslinking enzyme is utilized. As well known, TG is an enzyme which catalyzes acyl transition reaction between &ggr;-carboxyamide group of a remaining glutamine group in the protein and various first-class amines. When the first-class amine is an &egr;-amino group of lysine, an &egr;-(&ggr;-glutamil)lysine crosslink is formed among a protein or polypeptide chain, and this crosslink can form a protein crosslinked polymer.
These days, TG has been used for manufacturing many foods such as a marine product made with a boiled fish paste, and a processed livestock product. Moreover, an example in which TG is also used in a dairy product has been reported. For example, in Japanese Patent Application Laid-Open No. 27471/1989, a cheese manufacturing method including a process of adding TG in a manufacturing process is described. However, in the described cheese manufacturing method, the cheese is manufactured from the curd formed u
Kumazawa Yoshiyuki
Kuraishi Chiya
Nio Noriki
Sakaguchi Shoji
Sakamoto Jiro
Ajinomoto Co. Inc.
Oblon & Spivak, McClelland, Maier & Neustadt P.C.
Wong Leslie
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