Emmental cheese is a food product well known and valued not only in Switzerland, where it comes from, but also beyond its borders.  Currently, it is manufactured in many European countries, such as Germany, France, Austria, Finland, Netherlands, and Poland.  Consumers appreciate it, primarily, for its exceptional organoleptic features, including sweet, nutty, and fruity odour. In this review, the  factors were characterized to impact the profile of volatile compounds of Emmental cheese as well as the groups of substances forming it.  Attention was drawn to alcohols, aldehydes, ketones, esters, hydrocarbons, lactones, furans, terpenes, nitrogen and sulphur-containing  substances, as well as fatty acids. Furthermore, the origin of volatile compounds in Emmental cheese was discussed as were the changes  they underwent during manufacturing. The olfactometric studies indicate that only a small part of the profile-forming volatiles is odouractive and, amongst them, even a smaller group significantly impact the development of typical odour of the cheese. In recent  years, a number of papers dealing with the analysis of volatile and odouractive compounds in Emmental cheese were published; however,  there is no review published containing a compendium of odourants typical for this type of cheese and pointing out the key odour-active  olatiles. Therefore, in this paper was presented a list of odour-active volatile compounds in Emmental cheese. Among them, there were  highlighted the substances considered as key odourants in this type of cheese, i.e.: 3-methylbutanal, heptan-2-one, 1-octen-3-one, diacetyl,  ethyl butyrate, ethyl caproate, ethyl isovalerate, δ-decalaktone, furaneol, homofuraneol, skatole, methional, and propionic acid.  Moreover, there were depicted the odour descriptors descriptive of particular odour-active compounds identified in Emmental cheese.