Plant-based cheese formulated with corn prolamin

Abstract: The components of milk that make up the protein network within cheese, along with the processing steps utilized to produce various cheese varieties are critical to the structure and rheological properties, within the small and large amplitude regimes, of the product. The functional properties of cheese, namely stretch and melt, are the result of these characteristics. The structural components in plant-based cheese formulations (i.e., starch) differ from that of dairy cheese, causing these products to display a different set of rheological properties, thus reducing their functionality. The incorporation of a plasticized corn prolamin ingredient into this structural network has been shown to shift several key small amplitude rheological properties (Gʹ, Gʹʹ, tan δ) of the plant-based cheese product towards that of several dairy cheese varieties that display a high level of stretch. These improved rheological properties result in increased stretch performance relative to traditional plant-based cheese formulations. These results demonstrate the potential of using corn prolamin in plant-based cheese formulations and highlight the need for identifying other plant-based proteins that form an interconnecting network throughout the structural matrix, which is necessary to achieve the large amplitude rheological properties of high-stretch dairy cheeses.