Identifying cheese whey an adulterant in milk: Limited contribution of a sensometric approach

•Sensometric approach to identify cheese whey in milk•Inconsistent findings were observed.•Instrumental methodologies are the most appropriated option.

A sensometric approach for the identification of sensory descriptors that characterize milk samples added with whey was investigated. Sweet cheese whey (pH = 6.59, nonfat dry = 8.06% w/w) was added to raw milk in increasing concentrations (0, 5, 10, 15 and 20% v/v), and then submitted to quantitative descriptive analysis. The data treated used multivariate statistical methods, principal component analysis (PCA) and hierarchical cluster analysis (HCA). Some inconsistent results were reported during the evaluation of the samples, suggesting problems along the panel member training and/or lack of concentration, motivation along the test. Our results suggest chemometric methods allied to descriptive sensory tests present limited contribution to investigate authenticity of milk due the presence of cheese whey. This aspect compromising the performance the multivariate analysis, which findings should be face as tendency.