Twenty-five commercial food grade and alalytical grade lipases were used to study the patterns of release of short-chain free fatty acids (FFA) from milk fat in cheese slurries. Principal component Analysis showed that there were four distinctive groups by the FFA ratios and five groups by the FFA concentrations. However, Average Linkage Cluster Analysis showed that the patterns of FFA released were dependent upon distance defined between groups of lipases. All the lipases tested with both statistical analysis had distinctive specificities in hydrolyzing short-chain FFA from milk fat. Lipases from ruminant-animal origins produced an extremely high ratio (>40%) of butyric acid and a low ratio (<26%) of capric acid to total short chain FFA. Lipases from porcinepancreas and some microbial origins showed balanced production in both bytyric and capric acid. However, most lipases from microbial origins released a high ratio of capric acid but similar ratios to other origin enzymes for short-chain free fatty acids. Ruminant-animal origin lipases produced short-chain FFA much higher in concentration than other lipases. Lipases from porcine pancreas as well as microbial origins showed different concentrations of the fatty acids. Ratios of short-chain FFA in each sample were not significantly changed during incubation periods (4 wk), whereas concentrations of the FFA increased considerably.