Cheese
Cheese, especially new varieties and blends of old favorites, is the perfect ingredient for product developers to use in the development of sauces and soups. Dipping sauces continue to become more popular in restaurants and foodservice establishments, with cheese sauces a key product in this growing segment. Combining cheeses in sauces makes them even more versatile for a variety of food applications—appetizer dip, vegetable topping or pasta tosser. Salsa, also popular, is being joined with various cheese combinations and used as a sauce for macaroni and cheese.

As companies develop lines of gourmet, upscale soups, specialty cheeses will play a larger role in adding distinct flavors. Cheese gives soup a solid base to which any number of ingredients can be added.

Cottage cheese serves as a base in lowfat, cream-style sauces and soups. It maintains the desired cream-style texture while also contributing dairy notes and fewer calories.

Ideas:

• Experiment with convenience cheese sauce products as a base for new sauce concepts
• Consider using cheese with crumbly or tougher textures for chunky sauces
• Try specialty cheese and aged varieties
• Consider cheese with different or complementary textures

Suggested Cheeses:

• Blue
• Brie
• Camembert
• Cheddar
• Cottage
• Cream
• Edam
• Gruyere
• Monterey Jack
• Parmesan
• Pasteurized Process American
• Romano
• Swiss

Concentrated and Dry Milk Ingredients

• Effectively form and stabilize emulsions in sauces and soups
• Undenatured dairy proteins are able to form rigid, heat-induced irreversible gels that hold water and fat, and provide structural support to soups and sauces
• Provide water-binding properties, which are very important in formulating reduced-fat sauces and soups
• Enhance the color and appearance of sauces and soups, particularly reduced-fat creamy-style products, by providing opacity
• Milkfat adds richness to certain soups and sauces; acts as a flavor carrier for fat-soluble ingredients, spices, herbs and sweet flavors; and milkfat’s low melting point ensures complete flavor release

Milkfat and Butter

• Milkfat ingredients provide unique flavor, mouthfeel and emulsification properties to gravies, white sauces and cream soups
• Butter adds a rich, unique flavor that is unmatched by any other fat
• Butter can be heated to different temperatures to produce characteristic flavor notes associated with different sauces: lightly melted butter is typically used in cream and white sauces such as Hollandaise, to provide rich, dairy notes; slightly overheated butter provides roasted, cooked notes that complement brown sauces and gravies; overheated, unburned butter contributes flavor notes that complement barbecue and smoke-flavored sauces
• Butter works well as a flavor carrier for spices, sweet and savory flavors, herbs and other fat-soluble ingredients
• Butter aids in the even distribution of oil-soluble flavors throughout sauces and soups—its narrow melting range ensures quick flavor release and complete melting of butter at body temperatures for a “melt-away” effect, which aids in smooth mouthfeel
• Butter contributes a visually appealing golden color, or a darker color after heat treatment, to sauces and soups

Whey

• WPC and WPI can partially replace or extend egg protein in sauces, reducing costs while enhancing perceived health and microbiological safety benefits
• Delivers exceptional nutritional value to salad dressings, including amino acids that are readily digestible and completely bioavailable
• Provides an excellent source of calcium and an essential nutrient not readily available in other regularly consumed foods—100 grams of dry sweet whey contains about 770 mg of calcium and 100 grams of dry acid whey contains about 2,280 mg of calcium
• Contributes to a food’s healthful image and clean label, and ultimately, to the sale of the food
• Emulsification properties of whey ingredients aid in the dispersion of fat in sauces and soups; efficient dispersion can reduce the fat level in some formulas and prevent defects such as creaming, coalescence and oiling off
• Enhanced emulsification results in sauces and soups that are perceived to be creamier and more uniform
• Serves as an excellent low-cost bulking and flow agent in dry mixes, as well as an excellent emulsifier that helps reduce clumping and allows all ingredients to remain evenly distributed
• Enhances water-binding, an important functional property in sauces and soups that enables foods to retain water (an inexpensive ingredient), and thus, reduce cost
• The water-binding capacity of a sauce or soup can have significant effects on machinability by modifying the viscosity of the food; water retention also affects the texture of food
• Increased moisture content in many foods helps enhance the sensory profile by increasing flavor release, which is especially important in formulating reduced-fat sauces and soups
• WPC and WPI can provide fatlike attributes such as opacity, lubricity and mouthfeel to lowfat formulations, and at the same time, control moisture and form gels
• Provides viscosity in dry mix, ready-to-use, condensed and frozen soups and sauces
• In many applications, WPC and WPI can replace the thermal gelation and emulsification functionalities of dehydrated eggs
• WPC, which is especially effective with acidic pH, is ideally suited to add viscosity to products such as tomato-based sauce mixes because it exhibits thermal gelation
• Improves the appearance of sauces and soups, particularly reduced-fat products, by adding opacity
• Dry sweet whey imparts a slightly sweet flavor profile to sauces, allowing the natural spice and herb flavors of soups and sauces to come through; in some very delicately flavored soups, demineralized whey is an alternative ingredient that further reduces the flavor effect from dry whey
• Delivers a very bland, very slightly sweet flavor that allows other flavors, such as vegetables and various spices, to develop to their full potential in some applications; the lactic acid flavor in acid whey is used to enhance the overall sensory profile of the sauce or soup