Artisanal and industrial Maroilles cheeses: Are they different? Comparison using sensory, physico-chemical and microbiological approaches

The Maroilles cheese is a soft French protected designation of origin (PDO) cheese with washed rind. The Maroilles is available in several brands and can either be manufactured by hand or industrially in the North of France. But are the artisanal and industrial Maroilles really different? To investigate this question, seven artisanal and eight industrial Maroilles were subjected to a sensory analysis based on a sorting task, a microbiological evaluation, an analysis of main physico-chemical parameters (concentrations in organic matter and protein, pH, water activity, and ions), a texture analysis by penetration test and an evaluation of colour parameters (L*, a* and b*). The analyses showed large differences among the 15 Maroilles on almost all the measured parameters. Moreover, the overall analysis of the datasets by multiple factor analysis (MFA) highlighted two clusters of artisanal Maroilles and one cluster that includes all the industrial Maroilles. (C) 2018 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.