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Contribution to the Knowledge of the Taste of Milk

C. L. Roadhouse and G. A. Koestler

Department of Dairy Industry, University of California, Davis
Department of Chemistry, Swiss Dairy and Bacteriological Experiment Station, Liebefeld, Bern, Switzerland

ABSTRACT

1. The taste of milk, as this word is commonly used, is the sensation perceived when milk is taken into the mouth. The term "flavor," as used in this paper, is a combination of the sensations of taste, perceived in the mouth, with those of smell, produced through the medium of the inner nasal passages. It has aided in precision to confine the term "taste" to those sensations which are perceived only in the mouth.
   
2. The primary taste of milk has been designated as the sum of all of the taste impressions coming from normal milk, and not influenced by feed or the secretion of abnormal milk.
   
3. The secondary taste includes that which is added to the primary taste from different sources, such as feed and products of disease. It is necessary to eliminate these secondary influences in order that primary tastes can be properly determined.
   
4. The chloride-lactose relation is one of the most important bases of milk taste. Milk samples with a high chloride-lactose ratio were judged less favorably than those of like origin where the chloride-lactose ratio was relatively low.
   
5. The primary taste of skim milk is practically equal to that of the whole milk from which it is separated.
   
6. By the application of dialysis, it was possible to separate the milk into two parts (dialyzate and residue) with extreme differences in taste. It was found that nearly all of the milk components producing the primary taste were present in the dialyzate, while the components remaining in the residue could be designated as free from taste.
   
7. By dialysis it has been further demonstrated that fat and protein substances, as well as certain difficultly dialyzable salt components, which go to make up a large percentage of the milk content, take only a subordinate part in the primary taste of the milk.
   
8. The dialysis of milk containing a pronounced feed taste has shown that the feed taste was found very largely in the residue, and appeared to be either not dialysable or in some way combined with milk fat or with other non-dialysable materials.
   

This study was conducted by the senior author while on sabbatical leave in Switzerland during 1927–1928. The authors are indebted to Mr. W. Loertscher of the Dairy Experiment Station at Liebefeld, Switzerland, for helpful collaboration in examining the flavor of the milk.