New York Agricultural Experiment Station. 263 



classes of compounds are formed peptones. Whatever may be 

 the precise chemical relation and order of formation, the point we 

 wish to keep in mind is that the amounts of these compounds do 



not increase reru'.arly cr accumulate continuously in the cheese. 

 Tlie extent to wl.ich any accumulation occurs in these transient 

 stages depends upcn the conditions of ripening. For example, 

 at lew temperatures, the transient nitrogen products formed ap- 

 pear to pass into other forms less rapidly than at higher tem- 

 peratures and they tend to accumulate to some extent. This can 

 be shown by comparing the results secured with cheeses ripened 

 at 32° F. and at 70° F. These data are takeii from Table II. 



Now, quite different from the behavior of these compounds is 

 that of amido compounds, which appear beyond question to re- 

 sult from the proteolysis of peptones, and of ammonia, which is 

 formed from the decomposition of amides. Ammonia is an end- 

 product and the amido-compounds are end-products to a con- 

 siderable extent in cheese normally ripened. They therefore ac- 

 cumulate in increasing quantities under all conditions that favor 

 their formation. 



influence of PRODUCTS OF PROTEOLYSIS ON THE CHEESE- 

 RIPENING PROCESS. 



Attention has been called to the fact that chemical changes in 

 the nitrogen compounds of cheese take place much more rapidly 

 in the early stages of ripening than later. In our work we found 

 that, in the first 3 months of the 18-month period of study, over 65 



