Effect of milk type on thermal properties of Gaziantep cheese

Because of its importance in terms of nutrition, cheese is included in the daily nutrition lists. Besides the nutritional value of cheese, information such as which source and which methods used in production is important both in terms of nutritional value and economy of processes. Such reasons cause problems in cheese production such as imitation/adulteration and the product needs to be analyzed. Thermal analysis, which is one of the analysis methods, is used in the characterization of foods. Thermal analysis; provides valuable information on many thermo-physical properties of food products. The resulting data can be used to understand the differences, especially if there is one, about the product structure. In this study, it was aimed to analyze possible differences in thermal properties of Gaziantep cheeses resulted from different animal milks and thus to determine the source of milk used in cheese. While there is no statistical difference between Cp values of Gaziantep cheese produced from cow and goat milk (p>0.05), Cp of cheese produced from sheep milk is statistically significantly different from cheese produced from cow and goat milk (p<0.01). There was no statistical difference between the Tg values of cheese produced from cow's and sheep's milk (p>0.05). The Tg value of cheese produced from goat's milk and the Tg value of cheese produced from cow's milk were statistically different (p<0.01), and the difference between the Tg value of cheese produced from sheep's milk is significant (p<0.05). Key words: Thermal properties, Gaziantep Cheese, Milk, Glass Transition Temperature