Effect of Starch Substitution and Fermentation Time on Volatile and Sensorial Properties in Vegan Cashew Cheese Spreads

Abstract

Vegan cheeses today are a work in progress - they are generally more expensive and have less desirable taste, texture, and nutritional value compared to their dairy counterparts. Our in-house cashew-based and fermented vegan cheeses demonstrated good flavor attributes. However, the fact that cashews are expensive greatly limits cashew vegan cheese from commercialization. To our knowledge, very little work on cashew-based fermented vegan cheese is available in literature. The objectives of this research were to: 1). analyze the feasibility of partially replacing cashews with starches and 2). analyze how fermentation time affects the properties of cashew-based vegan cheese. The formulation was developed by roasting and soaking cashews in distilled water and then blending the cashews with the Lactobacillus acidophilus culture and left to ferment at 35 °C. Identification of volatile compounds was performed using gas chromatography-mass spectrometry-olfactometry (GC-MS-O). Sensory evaluation, primarily overall liking and Just-About-Right (JAR), was used for cheese samples with two levels of starch replacement and showed no significant difference in overall liking between treatments. Penalty analysis showed that panelists who rated the cheese "too sour" and "too spreadable" to have the highest mean drop in liking. Multiple aldehydes, ketones, and acids have been tentatively identified in cheese samples. This work shows that it is viable to incorporate starches into cashew-based vegan cheeses. This work also provides additional information on how fermentation time affects vegan cheese's volatile compounds, which is useful information that can help vegan cheese producers.