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Frozen Fractured Cheese (Cheddar Type)

In cheese-making, milk is coagulated and then converted from a colloidal dispersion to a gel known as a curd. Water in the form of whey is then released from the curd to drop the moisture content to less than 40%. Water and the control of its loss is one of the most important factors in successful cheese-making. Clearly low-temperature SEM is the only method of successfully investigating the structure of this type of foodstuff. The micrograph illustrates a water-in-oil type emulsion in which the continuous phase is a mixture of protein and lipid and the dispersion phase - in the form of 2-5um diameter droplets is a mixture of water and whey proteins.

Bar = 5um.