October 22, 2020 • 39 mins
This fresh, spreadable cheese has roots that go back hundreds of years, but it found its niche in American cuisine in the past century with bagels, dips, and casseroles. Anney and Lauren dip into the science and history of cream cheese.
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Episode Transcript
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Speaker 1 (00:07):
Hello, and welcome to Savor Protection of I Heart Radio.
I'm Annie Reef and I'm Lauren Fogelbaum. And today we're
talking about cream cheese. Yes, cream cheese, which came up
in our episode WEDEO on Invitation crab right, because we
were talking about crab Rangoon. Yeah, and I really got
into the history of it, and I mentioned that in
(00:28):
passing uh in that episode, and a lot of you
wrote in and said, please cream cheese, ask and you
shall receive. Actually, as we always say, but well, you
have a running list. It is a long list, um,
a long disorganized list, but it is quite disorganized. It
(00:49):
is a list, and it's interspersed with things like five
nights at Freddie's which aren't food things because I really
wanted to record you playing that, and I now have
that on VR and it's no okay. I'm also I'm
like low key already terrified by VR all the time,
so for like five minutes at a time, and I
(01:13):
have to stop. Um, but about cream cheese. I on
cream cheese. It can be great sometimes, like sometimes I
really really want it, I'm really craving it, and I
know sometimes I've had it and been just so surprised
by how good it is. So maybe I'm just not
getting great cream cheese a lot. I don't know, But yeah,
most of the time, I'm just kind of like me, huh, yeah.
(01:37):
Cream cheese is the sort of thing that I always
I I struggle with because I understand what a serving
size is, but I also that is less than the
amount that I want to consume. Um. But but it's
always it's always so strange if you if you go
out and you get a bagel someplace that does like
pretty proper bagels or even improper bagels, like the amount
(02:00):
of cream cheese that I want is more than an
actual serving says, but way less then they will put
on a bagel for you if they give you a
schmere of cream cheese with your bagel. Um, And I
don't know, it's some kind of like Strodinger's amount of
cream cheese. I like don't understand. Like I I saw
I found a whole article about the very thing you're
(02:21):
talking about. Why do they put so much cream cheese
on bagels? So that's really funny to me that you
bring that up. Yeah, it's I'm always I'm always like,
how what do they think I am like, what am
I supposed to consume this? Yeah? Yeah, Um, I do
have many fond memories of Uh. There was an Einstein
(02:44):
Einstein Bagels at a Georgia tech school, and I think
I probably only went there two or three times the
whole time I was there, but I've never been to
one before. Yeah, I remember when I got up to
the front night, they were like what do you want?
And I was like what you mean? And they're like, well,
you got to choose your bagel. And then I was
overwhelmed by that. And then they're like, now you gotta
(03:05):
choose your cream cheese, and they were like twenty four
options and I've never seen anything like that before. Lord,
and I was like marveling at it, Like, tell me
what that was? That one? Everyone behind me and I
was like in the morning, They're like, oh, but I
didn't know this world existed. Sure, that's that's very sweet.
(03:26):
There was. Yeah, there's either in Einstein's or or another
bagel chain, probably in Einstein's, like right at the corner
in between my, uh my dorm situation and my classes.
And so that was a pretty frequent stop for me
when I was in college, and pretty frequent, relatively sad
(03:46):
stop because I was used to like a much better
version of a big collechmre. Yeah. I mean I suppose
speaking of cr bagel, Yeah yeah, from this and other opinions. Yeah,
Lauren has very very very strong opinions on bagels, and
she laid them out wonderfully. And I think it was
(04:09):
one of the only times that we've gotten like like
low key hate mail. Um someone someone wrote in UM
and and was and was like, was like, how dare
you be this opinionated about your bagels? Because you are
You are giving like people from Jersey a bad name
(04:31):
by being this strongly opinionated. It's you. It's your fault.
And I was like, wow, you got a lot of power, Lauren.
You know I like to think, So there you go,
there you go. Um. Also, I discovered, uh, there's a
(04:53):
wicked cheese oh fandom for cheese, and I'm outraged that
I didn't know that existed until now. Well, you know,
it's never too late to get into the cheese fandom.
This is remember when you went down that cheese hole
and you almost didn't come out. That's gonna happen to me.
(05:15):
How did you escape the cheese hoole? Um, I guess
eventually I started a food show where we just get
to talk about cheese sometimes. But it doesn't have to
be all the time. I can I can go off
and talk about I don't know, pastry lamination for a
while if I need to. All right, Well, if you
(05:38):
get a frantic text later about the cheese hole, just
be ready to send me on a different uh rabbit hole. No,
no problem, I'm here for you. Um perfect, Yeah, we can.
We can always find something else, probably fermentation related, yes, yes,
as we've discovered. Um, but I post today we are
(06:01):
talking about cheese. Are question? Cream cheese? What is it? Well?
Cream cheese is a type of fresh cheese that's made
usually from cow's milk with a high percentage of fat,
you know cream. Um, it's sort of like a like
a buttery cheese or like a cheesy butter maybe. Um.
(06:25):
It's it's a very thick, opaque white, sort of creamy,
sticky and just a little bit tart and a little buttery. Um.
It's not aged, or if it is, it's aged very
very little, so it doesn't have any kind of rind.
And it's sold in tubs or in little foil packets
in boxes, which got me thinking, is this technically a
goon situation? Is? Oh? Is cream cheese a goon product
(06:54):
Australia right in I thought you were talking about like
like a hit man or so like bagoon like yes, like, oh,
I don't understand this reference. No no, no, no no,
because it's a bag in a box. It's a little
under bag in a box anyway, it's not quite a
(07:17):
bag and you're not like squeezing it out through a
through a faucet. Probably you can make that happen, and
you can certainly open the foil in such a way,
yeah that you could squeeze it out. Yeah, you could,
you could anyway. Um, I don't know if they actually
have cream cheese in that packaging in Australia. I'm pretty
(07:40):
sure in the UK it's only in tubs. So yeah,
yeah again yeah, let usn't know. Gosh anyway, here in
the US, um the finished product must consist of at
least fat and a maximum moisture um and it's made
cream cheese by by standard zing a mixture of milk
(08:01):
and cream to the to the correct percentage of fat
that you want to work with, then pasteurizing that to
kill off any microbes that might be floating around, and
they're giving you a nice blank slate because then you're
going to introduce a starter culture of lactic acid bacteria.
And that's right, that means bacteria. M hmm. Yeah. So
(08:26):
so we we've talked about this process in previous cheese
episodes and in our better episodes a little bit. But um,
But basically, in order to solidify milk into cheese of
any sort, you've got to convince the milk solids and
liquids to separate out from each other. And under normal
milk circumstances, um, those solids are are distributed evenly throughout
(08:47):
those liquids, and what's called an emulsion because because the
solids are all negatively charged particles and the liquid is
neutral ly charged, So so like two same ends of
a magnet in the air, Um, the particles push off
of each other and space themselves out in the liquid
in an emulsion. Um. But if you add an acid
(09:09):
to the mix, it will neutralize the solids charge, and
then the solids will stop repelling each other and start
clumping together. Um. And it just so happens that there
are a whole bunch of friendly bacteria called lactic acid
bacteria that love to eat the sugars and milk. And
it also happens that they excrete acids um. So you
(09:30):
add a culture of those to your milk and they
do this work for you. Um. They also excrete flavor um.
In addition to the to the bright flavor of the
acid um, there's probably going to be a little bit
of a butter flavor in there as well. So to
make cream cheese from milk, you get your you get
your creamy milk. You you let the bacteria grow the
solids clumped together for a little while, maybe like five
(09:51):
to fifteen hours, then kill off the bacteria by heating
the product up, break up the clumps a little bit
so that the texture of the stuff is smooth, and
then strain out as much of the liquid called way
as you want by by by either draining it or
um centrifuging it. Yeah. Then you can either cold pack
your cream cheese if it's going to be eaten like
(10:12):
very soon, very fresh, or you can a hot pack
it and homogenize it using some kind of stabilizer like
like locust bean gum if you want it to be
be shelf or not shelf stable like refrigerator stable for
a couple of months. U uh huh uh huh. That's
why many many grocery store brands of cream cheese will
have some locust bean gun or something like that in there,
(10:33):
just as a stabilizer, just to keep it, keep it
fresher longer and text textury longer. Yeah. Um. And there
are lower fat cream cheese products on the market often
buffed up with even more stabilizers for texture. Um. You
can make similar products with plant based milks for for
people who are avoiding dairy. You can even make it
at home. It is a little bit tricky to get
(10:54):
the texture right um, but it's totally possible and the
result is um smooth spread herble um. It's used as
a topping for baked goods like bagels, UM, and as
a creamy ingredient in both savory and sweet dishes. UM
from a filling in like more other baked goods, to
kind of like a sauce binder in casse roles, to
(11:14):
a creamy element in dips, to a texturizer and flavorizer
and ice creams in cheesecakes, in frostings. UM. As a topping,
it is often blended, as Annie was saying with them,
various flavorings and addends both sweet and savory. Yes, it's
in all kinds of things. When I was thinking about
it earlier, I guess sometimes I don't. I don't realize
(11:39):
how much cream cheese is in our cuisine. Yeah here here,
especially once you get into the like the like hot
dips and casseroles categories. It is just everywhere because it's delicious,
it's fatty, it's it's gonna make everything just creamy and great.
(12:00):
But okay, but about the nutrition though, yeah, yeah, I
mean you know, cream cheese gets its name from cream
being added to the milk during production. It's a it's
a calorie dense food. Um, a lot, lot lots of
fats in there. Um. It also does have a bit
of protein though, um, you know it'll it'll certainly helpfully up.
But in order to keep you going, I would recommend
(12:21):
pairing it with more protein and some and some veg
Always always eat a vegetable. That's one of our many
mottos here, Always eat a vegetable. Um. For numbers, we
do have some numbers. So the brand of Philadelphia cream
Cheese accounts for about sixty of the cream cheese market Philadelphia.
(12:44):
Cream cheese is available in over eighty countries. Yeah. As
of two thousand seven, production of cream cheese and the
related American version of neuchatel in the US US was
at around UM three hundred and fifty thousand metric tons
(13:05):
per year. As of nine seven, Americans were consuming about
two point seven pounds of cream cheese per person per year,
which is about one point two kilos, which I'm impressed by. Yeah,
I'm I'm teetering between I can't tell if that's way
more than I thought or right right, I'm kind of
(13:28):
I'm kind of like, ah, yep, yep. The I will
say that the bagel boom in the United States right
around the the mid to late nineties like significantly upped
our national per capita consumption. M but yeah, yeah, And
(13:48):
and speaking of UM, cheese consumption overall has been going
down a little bit in the United States the past
couple of years. Um. I think just as people are
a little bit more aware of how calorie dunce those
foods can be. UM. But but the cream cheese seems
to be a staple that is not going anywhere. Cream
(14:08):
cheese is here to stay. Yeah, but but how did
we get out of here? Yes, Lauren, even even virtually
we are on the same page. Yeah we are. Um.
But yes, we will get into that history. But first
(14:29):
we're going to take a quick break for a word
from our sponsor, and we're back. Thank you sponsored, Yes,
thank you. So. Cream cheese predecessor, the European neu Chatel cheese,
(14:49):
goes all the way back to ten five, though the
first record of it doesn't appear until Free. It originated
in Normandy, France, in a small village called Neuchatel Opre.
Here's the name. Um. And it was a cow cheese
that was a bit harder than cream cheese, a bit grainier. Um.
It was eaten fresh or slightly aged. It had these
(15:10):
notes of like mushrooms and nuts, um, salty, savory cheese.
This is all what I got from reading articles about it.
I am notoriously bad at describing how things taste. But
also I've never had it. Um uh. And yeah that's
that could probably be its own episode, but probably yeah
yeah um. And if you jump all the way into
(15:30):
ninety nine, the cheese was given the AOC in France,
which again is sort of that like France, we have
saying it's only this and it has to be from here,
and it has to have these ingredients at this percentage,
and a national designation of what that is. Yeah yeah,
and uh, French neuchatel is is still a whole kind
(15:51):
of separate category. Um. It's made with whole rock, how's milk.
It's got a soft bloomed rind, like like a brie
or a camembert. Um. Sometimes it comes in a heart
shape us supposedly first made by French dairymaids who are
trying to woo English soldiers during the Hundred Years War.
Oh yeah, yeah, um traditionally made um that that savory,
(16:13):
earthy rhyne should encase this creamy and yeah, just slightly
grainy interior that's got a little bright papalactic acid to it.
Um and and yeah here in the US, I think
I've only ever seen nou chatel like package the same
way that our cream cheese is and sometimes sold as
like low fat cream cheese because it's um supposed to
(16:36):
have between fat as opposed to the over thirty three
that cream cheese is supposed to have. So uh yeah,
there you go, just Americans mucking about with stuff again.
As we want to do. Yeah, And also I do
love that that we looked up how to say that
word because nouch chatel, Because I'm pretty sure that every
(16:58):
time I saw it on packaging before now I've just
been like confused and just my brain went, I don't know,
acts a lottle what sure, let's move on? Um yeah, yeah,
your brain was just like nat Nope, unimportant. I will
say what I know. We did look it up and
the version we're saying is the English pronunciation, So just
(17:22):
put that out there. Cool cool, cool cool cool. So
the earliest documentation of cream cheese goes back to England
and three um, but I couldn't find any other documentation
of that other than this phrase appeared in England at
(17:43):
that time from the Marion Webster Dictionary, so I it
probably wasn't the same thing at all. Yeah, that there
are a few, um a few descriptors of these types
of soft um soft cheeses, soft fresh cheeses that run
around various parts of Europe that had cows, and we're
making cheese um for for all of this intervening time
(18:07):
from from like the eleventh century up through the mid
sixteenth century, mid to late sixteenth century. And it's a
little bit hard to to suss out whether they were
just talking about like any old soft rind cheese like this,
or if it was like a specific product that we
would recognize as being that today. I think it's the former. Um.
(18:28):
But yeah, at any rate, yes, at any rate. The
history of cream cheese in the United States begins sometime
in the eighteen seventies with a farmer in New York
named William Lawrence. Lawrence grew up working as a farm
hand for his improverished family, eventually going on to marry
a farmer's daughter, and he and many of the farmers
(18:49):
around him made nou chatel cheese, UM, sending these wrapped
up rolls of it to the city. UM. One day, UM,
this fancy grocer a pre coach Lawrence and requested that
he make a pricier de luxe version. So what did
you do? What did Lawrence do? Essentially, he added more fat,
(19:11):
He took curdled milk and pressed as much of the
liquid out as he could and replaced that liquid with cream,
and he went with the obvious name cream cheese. There
you go, there you go. And cream cheese did start
as a high price luxury item well to do diners
might request. In New York City, more and more farmers
started making their own cream cheeses, which impacted the price.
(19:34):
A pound of cream cheese cost thirty cents in eighty nine.
In nineteen o nine it rose to forty cents a pound. Um.
And it was wrapped in foil from these early days.
If you've ever bought it in that type of packaging
and wondered why such a weird, fussy, kind of difficult
piece of packaging exists in these are modern times, you
(19:56):
can you can thank the late eighteen hundreds. Yes, I
have wondered that, Why am I struggling with this? Um?
Enter Alva Reynolds, the cheese broker, not to fix the packaging,
but to you know, yeah, yes, he's just entering, Yes,
this outline. Um. He came to Lawrence with an offer
(20:19):
to distribute Lawrence's product under the name Philadelphia Cream Cheese.
Not because the cheese came from Philadelphia, Nope, because it doesn't. Didn't,
but Pennsylvania and particularly Philadelphia, was well known. They were
both well known for producing the best cheeses at the times. Jesus,
(20:43):
So it seems like there's a lot of fraudulent marketing
in cheese. I feel like every cheese episode we've done,
I've been like what, yeah, it's like and then they
lied to us to get us to buy more cheese,
when really they just had to say it's cheese and
it would have been like cool, I'm into cheese. Uh yeah.
(21:07):
Lawrence had begun his cream cheese work in eighteen seventy two,
which is why Philadelphia brand cream Cheese still bears that date. Um. Really,
the brand name itself wasn't used until eighty, which I
guess is more like cheese marketing lies. But that's cool anyway.
(21:28):
Cheese marketing lies is the spinoff show we need. That's
our true crime. That's our true crime show. Yes, Oh,
I would be so into it. Alright, alright, Um. Soon enough,
Lawrence couldn't keep up with the man, so Reynolds went
to other dairy farmers and brought them in to the
(21:51):
Philadelphia Cream Cheese fold, selling all of their products under
the same name. Um. Still not quite enough, and Reynolds
started his own farm. He called it the Phoenix Cheese Company,
and by nineteen o five he was already heavily marketing
his products and Lawrence by the way, was elected mayor
(22:11):
of Chester, New York in eight Yeah. Good for him, Yeah,
getting involved in local politics. Love it. Yeah yeah. I
read his obituary. It sounded like he also invented some
other things interesting guy um in Enix cream cheese became
a part of the fairly newly established Craft Cheese company,
(22:35):
which I know. We've touched on that in several episodes.
James L. Craft invention of cheese pastoration became integral to
the process of making Philadelphia cream cheese. This is also
around the time that cream cheese is price dropped in
the first round of ads for Yankee cream cheese ran
and the Yiddish press. And also around this time, a
(22:55):
New York cheese distributor and manufacturer named break Stones started
average I higher fat cream cheese to the Jewish community.
Your Blintzes will taste much better with Breakstones cream cheese.
The copy read things like that. Yeah yeah. Breakstones now
known mostly for for their sour cream um and their
cottage cheese products. But um, but but yeah interestingly brief
(23:20):
Breakstones side note um one of the uh foremost experts
on cream cheese out there, um is this uh this
Rabbi Oh my goodness by the name of Jeffrey Marks,
and yeah, he's he's a distant relative of the Breakstones
and learned that and so started researching stuff about cream cheese,
(23:43):
thinking like having heard a rumor that the Breakstones were
the originators of cream cheese as we know it, um,
which was untrue. But then he just got so into
learning about cream cheese that now he's like invited to
come lecture on cream cheese and he's written all these
articles about cream cheese. He's he's pretty great anyway. Yeah.
I I do love when we're researching a topic and
(24:07):
one name comes up over now the experts, and like,
just how do you become that expert? Where like everybody's like,
he's the cream cheese guy. Get him on the line.
That's we we got to talk about cream cheese, so
we need him. Yep. Yeah, I mean here we are
mentioning him. I love it. Yeah. Yeah. Uh. The end
(24:29):
of the nineteen twenties and beginning of the nineteen thirties
is also when the relationship between bagels and cream cheese
blossomed and cemented in the United States. Prior to that,
like we discussed in our Bagel episode Bagels were tougher
and thinner in the hole in the center was huge. Um,
not really ideal for spreading cream cheese. But with wheat
(24:51):
flour bagels, that all changed. I'll tell you that this
relationship is so just cemented here. I found, like researching
cream cheese, I found more articles on bagelsh Like absolutely,
they just popped up and I wasn't looking for them,
And it would be like the history of the bagel
(25:11):
with a little bit about about cream cheese. Yeah, yeah,
it's definitely. It's definitely a like like peanut butter and
jelly level association here. And uh yeah, as I think
we did talk about in that bagel episode, um, wheat
flour was more an American thing than it had been
in some of the countries um where bagels originated in
(25:34):
in Europe, um where uh rye flower would have been
a little bit more likely to have been used. So yeah,
we's it's a little bit fluffier. So yeah, well for
your bagel. Um, well, let's step back a bit to
the nine hundreds when we see the first recipes for
cream cheese pie and cream cheese cakes in American recipe books.
(25:56):
Um in cheesecake so curreal forward after a cheesecake made
from cream cheese from New York, from a New York
deli one at that year's World Fare New York Cheesecake.
Oh yeah, and this I definitely want to do a
whole episode about. I. I have just a little bit
(26:18):
of an aside I couldn't help myself. Um, cheesecake might
be one of my favorite It's it's way up there
in terms of favorite desserts. Like, it's one of the
few things that I crave really hard. Um. But yeah,
so so brief aside um. The idea of making cakes
from fresh cheeses had been around for a long heck
in time, it probably came over to America with Italian immigrants. Um.
(26:41):
And those sorts of things go all the way back
to like the second century BC in Rome, possibly even
further than that in Greek cuisine. Um. But yeah, New
York cheesecake happened thanks to cream cheese. Um. And over
the next couple of decades, from from into the nine
thirties and forties, it would become this very popular New
(27:01):
York City delhi and diner dessert, made famous by places
like Lyndy's in the Theater District and Rubens and one
Duncan Hines, who was a real person, which I did
not know that thing. Um, but cooler if I did know,
I've completely forgotten it and got to be pleasantly surprised again. Um.
He published a recipe for Lyndy's version in three So cute, uh,
(27:28):
He wrote, as I write this, gold is worth somewhere
around thirty two dollar announce Lindy's cheesecake at forty cents
a slice is somewhat less expensive, yet a good Many
people who have eaten at Lynda's famous Broadway restaurant consider
it pure gold. Oh, I love it. I think we
(27:48):
were when we were going to Lexington one of our
field trips, and I was like planning out the road
trip we tried to go to there's a Duncan museum. Yeah,
now I remember totally. Yeah. One day A sort of
related to all of this, In the nineteen hundreds, Craft
(28:08):
started publishing recipes utilizing Philadelphia cream cheese after they purchased
it in magazines, further popularizing it across the United States.
These recipes ranged from all kinds of things. Yes, the dips,
the cast roles, the cheesecakes, the stuffings. Um, and I
feel like that comes up a lot in these two
where I've just never appreciated the impact these sort of
(28:30):
companies sponsored magazines had, Yeah, like cultural on our entire dietary,
like preference that it's really wild. Yeah yeah, Um, I
still have that banana one you you let me borrow? Yeah? Yeah? Um. Bagels,
(28:51):
cream cheese and locks seems to have been associated seems
to have become associated with the Jewish community in the
nineteen forties. Um, as we mentioned in our what episode
was it? It's one of my favorite quotes, And I
was racking my brains trying to remember the history of
the carrot cake. It must have been episode Yeah is
really murky, And I found this quote from a cake
(29:13):
expert that said, like, basically it was her Moby Day.
Like I love like the mystery of the curroate cake.
But the first known recorded instance of using cream cheese
frosting to cover curate cake comes from an American recipe
book dating back to the nineteen sixties. Yes, um, but
(29:34):
American recipes had been calling for serving um like sweet
breakfast breads like banana nutbread with spreads of cream cheese
as early as the nineteen thirties, So I think that
there was probably just some kind of like slow evolution
of that type of cake and those type of quick breads, um,
and and that type of frosting getting just sweeter and sweeter. Yes,
(29:58):
oh yeah. UM. Philadelphia cream cheese was introduced to the
UK in the nineteen sixties as well. UM tubs of
Philadelphia cream cheese became available in nineteen seventy and those
foil wrappers most of us are familiar with the come
in those. UM. In nineteen seventy seven, the company debuted
Philadelphia Light. As we mentioned in our Imitation Crab episode. UM,
(30:22):
this whole thing of making sushi palatable to Americans, this
was just a big push in the nineteen eighties. UM
involved a lot of cream cheese. Oh yes, that's still man.
Are you ever like reading a sushi menu and and
and like the description of a role and you get
to that one ingredient that just makes you go whoah oh? No,
(30:46):
cream cheese is that for me? That's I used to
really love it. I do find it very funny that
the Philadelphia role, which almost always has cream cheese, does
not Philadelphia cream cheese doesn't come from Philadelphia. UM, but
I suppose the name is still Philadelphia, so I guess
(31:07):
that's legit. It's still it's still Yeah, it's like a
pun I guess kind of yeah, because it's probably that
brand like, yeah, I don't know, makes six out of ten. Um,
I will and no shade on anyone who likes cream
cheese in their sushi. You do what makes you happy. Um.
I used to be very fond of it when I
was younger, so I don't know, Yeah, yeah, it is.
(31:29):
It was interesting to read um sort of this like
nostalgic brand loyalty to Philadelphia cream cheese. And I read
several articles where people were the writer was trying to
get to the bottom of why that is. And it
was interesting to hear chefs say, you know, it might
not be my favorite, but it's just consistent, and I
know most people use it um and so they'll use
(31:52):
it to test recipes or whatever. And I just thought
that was interesting. I never really thought about that aspect
of it before. When a brand is so, you know,
that's probably what people are going to use when you
say cream cheese, So you're going to test your recipes
with that? Yeah, oh yeah, I never thought about that before.
I guess, Um, gosh, there there there was this this
(32:16):
amazing and when I if I'm in a grocery store,
I'm probably going to go for Philadelphia Brown cream cheese. Um.
This is not sponsored by them. I'm just making a statement. UM,
but my preference if I if I can, is to
go to a deli or a bagel place and get
their cream cheese that is probably sourced from some awesome
(32:37):
dairy somewhere. Mm hmm yeah yeah stuff. Uh wow. Speaking
of Philadelphia cream cheese, that line introduced several new products
in the first decade of the two thousand's, like mini tubs,
Philadelphia Extra Light, new flavors like garden Vegetables, basil our basil.
(32:59):
The packaging went through a redesign just always involved evolving
always um. And then um there was that whole um
uh cream cheese tea thing that happened over the past
couple of years. Um that uh that like like like
Asian cafe um, like like Japanese and Korean cafe trend
(33:21):
of um using cream cheese to make like a sort
of like a like a foamy thick whipped topping. UM.
For I've mostly seen it on hot teas. I think
that I suppose I'm not sure. I'm not sure if
it goes on cold beverages as well. Um, I I know,
I know, like I'm sweet hut here in Atlanta has
some cream cheese teas. I don't think I've ever had
(33:44):
it because I was always like, I don't know if
I want that, And now that I think about it,
it's probably delicious. Like I love the flavor of cream cheese.
I like like a good like hot milk tea. So man,
I've been I've been missing out the craving of the episode.
I didn't know that's what it was going to be here.
You go, all right, well, listeners right in let us
(34:07):
know about your experiences with that and speaking of that's
about what we have on cream cheese for today. But
we do have listener mail, we do. But first we've
got one more quick break for a word from our sponsor.
(34:28):
And we're back. Thank you, sponsor, Yes, thank you, and
we're back with me. I'm you know, smooth. It is
not necessarily my thing. I did appreciate when you said
I was smoothed. Uh, but you know, I gave it
a dry That's how I see it. No, I liked it,
(34:51):
and it was kind of you. You were making a
gesture that's sort of sort of like a like a schmear,
like a yeah, I was putting the cream cheese on
the yeah. Yeah. Okay. So we have a letter from Alicia,
who has been embarking on a journey of binging all
of our episodes, has been just sending us. I know
(35:14):
we've read some of our letters before, but I love
it updating on what episodes she's seen and her thoughts
on them. So Alicia wrote about our our recent re
release of the Mocktail episode. This episode reminded me of
the mocktail that is featured in the sixth book of
the series of Unfortunate Events, The Rats Elevator, the Aqueous Martini.
(35:36):
This drink was essentially cold water within all of it.
Within the bottle are children were with Esme and Jerome Squalor.
This was considered the very in drink in a fashionable society.
No surprise that the kids didn't like it, which side note,
I love that and that is so funny. It's a
(35:57):
very good commentary on like what yes, yes, uh. Then
she wrote about Thousand Islands dressing. I live in the
Thousand Islands. This was created to be served with fish
when fishing was a large part of the area. However,
the town that it belongs to is wildly disputed up here. Okay,
m hmmm. In a barbecue episode, there was talk of
(36:20):
eating alligator. The New York State Fair has a booth
every year where you can eat alligator on a stick.
Along with that, they offer wild board and kangaroo. Once
I got over the fear that kangaroo Jack and his
friends weren't going to drop kick me for eating at
I decided is the best thing I have ever eaten.
Coffee commercial because I enjoy your silly funds and jokes.
(36:41):
I was a bit disappointed that the phrase wasn't if
my coffee is weak, then I am weak. But don't matter.
I have a new silly coffee model for you. I
grind my coffee fresh daily And with that being said,
you gotta grind those beans if you want to grind
those dreams. I love it. I'm in Yeah. It makes
(37:02):
me feel like my morning cup of coffees like so badass,
as opposed to what it is right now, which is
kind of just like, oh God, get me caffeine. Yeah yeah, please,
as soon as possible, pour it into my eyeballs. How
does it get in faster? Yeah, yeah, that's how I feel.
(37:25):
Um um, Hayward wrote, as a key West resident, I
was amazed how many times you mentioned key West without
giving it any credit. This Miami or Tampa thing is
utter bs. Miami did not even exist and the Tampa
cigar makers moved there from Key West. As far as
the US goes, the Cuban sandwich was made for key
(37:48):
West cigar makers lunch long before either Tampa or Miami
didn't even exist. And there is no salami in an
authentic Cuban sandwich. Again, that is just newbie b s
dang another city in the phrase, Oh I love this,
(38:08):
I love this so much. Oh my heck. Um. Also,
I will say that my friend Cody, who is from
Central Florida, um uh, told me very firmly that that
um that salami is an unauthentic human sandwich and that
anything else this is awesome. I love how many people
(38:30):
are so like, no, this is sort of the Cuban town.
I just had it. This is what it is. And
I actually responded to Hayward, and he responded back with
more points. Yeah, oh that's great, yep, please keep those coming.
We love it. Oh yeah, well, we adore a strong opinion.
(38:50):
If you did not know that about us, Yes, yes,
and you can send those two us. We would love
to get them. Thanks to both of these listeners for
already doing so. If you'd like to email us, our
email is Hello at savor pod dot com. We are
also on social media. You can find us on Facebook, Twitter,
and Instagram at savor pod, and we do hope to
hear from you. Savor is a production of I Heart Radio.
(39:13):
For more podcasts my heart Radio, you can visit the
i heart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen
to your favorite shows. Thanks as always to your super
producers Dylan Fagin and Andrew Howard. Thanks to you for listening,
and we hope that lots more good things are coming
your way.
Hello, and welcome to Savor Protection of I Heart Radio.
I'm Annie Reef and I'm Lauren Fogelbaum. And today we're
talking about cream cheese. Yes, cream cheese, which came up
in our episode WEDEO on Invitation crab right, because we
were talking about crab Rangoon. Yeah, and I really got
into the history of it, and I mentioned that in
(00:28):
passing uh in that episode, and a lot of you
wrote in and said, please cream cheese, ask and you
shall receive. Actually, as we always say, but well, you
have a running list. It is a long list, um,
a long disorganized list, but it is quite disorganized. It
(00:49):
is a list, and it's interspersed with things like five
nights at Freddie's which aren't food things because I really
wanted to record you playing that, and I now have
that on VR and it's no okay. I'm also I'm
like low key already terrified by VR all the time,
so for like five minutes at a time, and I
(01:13):
have to stop. Um, but about cream cheese. I on
cream cheese. It can be great sometimes, like sometimes I
really really want it, I'm really craving it, and I
know sometimes I've had it and been just so surprised
by how good it is. So maybe I'm just not
getting great cream cheese a lot. I don't know, But yeah,
most of the time, I'm just kind of like me, huh, yeah.
(01:37):
Cream cheese is the sort of thing that I always
I I struggle with because I understand what a serving
size is, but I also that is less than the
amount that I want to consume. Um. But but it's
always it's always so strange if you if you go
out and you get a bagel someplace that does like
pretty proper bagels or even improper bagels, like the amount
(02:00):
of cream cheese that I want is more than an
actual serving says, but way less then they will put
on a bagel for you if they give you a
schmere of cream cheese with your bagel. Um, And I
don't know, it's some kind of like Strodinger's amount of
cream cheese. I like don't understand. Like I I saw
I found a whole article about the very thing you're
(02:21):
talking about. Why do they put so much cream cheese
on bagels? So that's really funny to me that you
bring that up. Yeah, it's I'm always I'm always like,
how what do they think I am like, what am
I supposed to consume this? Yeah? Yeah, Um, I do
have many fond memories of Uh. There was an Einstein
(02:44):
Einstein Bagels at a Georgia tech school, and I think
I probably only went there two or three times the
whole time I was there, but I've never been to
one before. Yeah, I remember when I got up to
the front night, they were like what do you want?
And I was like what you mean? And they're like, well,
you got to choose your bagel. And then I was
overwhelmed by that. And then they're like, now you gotta
(03:05):
choose your cream cheese, and they were like twenty four
options and I've never seen anything like that before. Lord,
and I was like marveling at it, Like, tell me
what that was? That one? Everyone behind me and I
was like in the morning, They're like, oh, but I
didn't know this world existed. Sure, that's that's very sweet.
(03:26):
There was. Yeah, there's either in Einstein's or or another
bagel chain, probably in Einstein's, like right at the corner
in between my, uh my dorm situation and my classes.
And so that was a pretty frequent stop for me
when I was in college, and pretty frequent, relatively sad
(03:46):
stop because I was used to like a much better
version of a big collechmre. Yeah. I mean I suppose
speaking of cr bagel, Yeah yeah, from this and other opinions. Yeah,
Lauren has very very very strong opinions on bagels, and
she laid them out wonderfully. And I think it was
(04:09):
one of the only times that we've gotten like like
low key hate mail. Um someone someone wrote in UM
and and was and was like, was like, how dare
you be this opinionated about your bagels? Because you are
You are giving like people from Jersey a bad name
(04:31):
by being this strongly opinionated. It's you. It's your fault.
And I was like, wow, you got a lot of power, Lauren.
You know I like to think, So there you go,
there you go. Um. Also, I discovered, uh, there's a
(04:53):
wicked cheese oh fandom for cheese, and I'm outraged that
I didn't know that existed until now. Well, you know,
it's never too late to get into the cheese fandom.
This is remember when you went down that cheese hole
and you almost didn't come out. That's gonna happen to me.
(05:15):
How did you escape the cheese hoole? Um, I guess
eventually I started a food show where we just get
to talk about cheese sometimes. But it doesn't have to
be all the time. I can I can go off
and talk about I don't know, pastry lamination for a
while if I need to. All right, Well, if you
(05:38):
get a frantic text later about the cheese hole, just
be ready to send me on a different uh rabbit hole. No,
no problem, I'm here for you. Um perfect, Yeah, we can.
We can always find something else, probably fermentation related, yes, yes,
as we've discovered. Um, but I post today we are
(06:01):
talking about cheese. Are question? Cream cheese? What is it? Well?
Cream cheese is a type of fresh cheese that's made
usually from cow's milk with a high percentage of fat,
you know cream. Um, it's sort of like a like
a buttery cheese or like a cheesy butter maybe. Um.
(06:25):
It's it's a very thick, opaque white, sort of creamy,
sticky and just a little bit tart and a little buttery. Um.
It's not aged, or if it is, it's aged very
very little, so it doesn't have any kind of rind.
And it's sold in tubs or in little foil packets
in boxes, which got me thinking, is this technically a
goon situation? Is? Oh? Is cream cheese a goon product
(06:54):
Australia right in I thought you were talking about like
like a hit man or so like bagoon like yes, like, oh,
I don't understand this reference. No no, no, no no,
because it's a bag in a box. It's a little
under bag in a box anyway, it's not quite a
(07:17):
bag and you're not like squeezing it out through a
through a faucet. Probably you can make that happen, and
you can certainly open the foil in such a way,
yeah that you could squeeze it out. Yeah, you could,
you could anyway. Um, I don't know if they actually
have cream cheese in that packaging in Australia. I'm pretty
(07:40):
sure in the UK it's only in tubs. So yeah,
yeah again yeah, let usn't know. Gosh anyway, here in
the US, um the finished product must consist of at
least fat and a maximum moisture um and it's made
cream cheese by by standard zing a mixture of milk
(08:01):
and cream to the to the correct percentage of fat
that you want to work with, then pasteurizing that to
kill off any microbes that might be floating around, and
they're giving you a nice blank slate because then you're
going to introduce a starter culture of lactic acid bacteria.
And that's right, that means bacteria. M hmm. Yeah. So
(08:26):
so we we've talked about this process in previous cheese
episodes and in our better episodes a little bit. But um,
But basically, in order to solidify milk into cheese of
any sort, you've got to convince the milk solids and
liquids to separate out from each other. And under normal
milk circumstances, um, those solids are are distributed evenly throughout
(08:47):
those liquids, and what's called an emulsion because because the
solids are all negatively charged particles and the liquid is
neutral ly charged, So so like two same ends of
a magnet in the air, Um, the particles push off
of each other and space themselves out in the liquid
in an emulsion. Um. But if you add an acid
(09:09):
to the mix, it will neutralize the solids charge, and
then the solids will stop repelling each other and start
clumping together. Um. And it just so happens that there
are a whole bunch of friendly bacteria called lactic acid
bacteria that love to eat the sugars and milk. And
it also happens that they excrete acids um. So you
(09:30):
add a culture of those to your milk and they
do this work for you. Um. They also excrete flavor um.
In addition to the to the bright flavor of the
acid um, there's probably going to be a little bit
of a butter flavor in there as well. So to
make cream cheese from milk, you get your you get
your creamy milk. You you let the bacteria grow the
solids clumped together for a little while, maybe like five
(09:51):
to fifteen hours, then kill off the bacteria by heating
the product up, break up the clumps a little bit
so that the texture of the stuff is smooth, and
then strain out as much of the liquid called way
as you want by by by either draining it or
um centrifuging it. Yeah. Then you can either cold pack
your cream cheese if it's going to be eaten like
(10:12):
very soon, very fresh, or you can a hot pack
it and homogenize it using some kind of stabilizer like
like locust bean gum if you want it to be
be shelf or not shelf stable like refrigerator stable for
a couple of months. U uh huh uh huh. That's
why many many grocery store brands of cream cheese will
have some locust bean gun or something like that in there,
(10:33):
just as a stabilizer, just to keep it, keep it
fresher longer and text textury longer. Yeah. Um. And there
are lower fat cream cheese products on the market often
buffed up with even more stabilizers for texture. Um. You
can make similar products with plant based milks for for
people who are avoiding dairy. You can even make it
at home. It is a little bit tricky to get
(10:54):
the texture right um, but it's totally possible and the
result is um smooth spread herble um. It's used as
a topping for baked goods like bagels, UM, and as
a creamy ingredient in both savory and sweet dishes. UM
from a filling in like more other baked goods, to
kind of like a sauce binder in casse roles, to
(11:14):
a creamy element in dips, to a texturizer and flavorizer
and ice creams in cheesecakes, in frostings. UM. As a topping,
it is often blended, as Annie was saying with them,
various flavorings and addends both sweet and savory. Yes, it's
in all kinds of things. When I was thinking about
it earlier, I guess sometimes I don't. I don't realize
(11:39):
how much cream cheese is in our cuisine. Yeah here here,
especially once you get into the like the like hot
dips and casseroles categories. It is just everywhere because it's delicious,
it's fatty, it's it's gonna make everything just creamy and great.
(12:00):
But okay, but about the nutrition though, yeah, yeah, I
mean you know, cream cheese gets its name from cream
being added to the milk during production. It's a it's
a calorie dense food. Um, a lot, lot lots of
fats in there. Um. It also does have a bit
of protein though, um, you know it'll it'll certainly helpfully up.
But in order to keep you going, I would recommend
(12:21):
pairing it with more protein and some and some veg
Always always eat a vegetable. That's one of our many
mottos here, Always eat a vegetable. Um. For numbers, we
do have some numbers. So the brand of Philadelphia cream
Cheese accounts for about sixty of the cream cheese market Philadelphia.
(12:44):
Cream cheese is available in over eighty countries. Yeah. As
of two thousand seven, production of cream cheese and the
related American version of neuchatel in the US US was
at around UM three hundred and fifty thousand metric tons
(13:05):
per year. As of nine seven, Americans were consuming about
two point seven pounds of cream cheese per person per year,
which is about one point two kilos, which I'm impressed by. Yeah,
I'm I'm teetering between I can't tell if that's way
more than I thought or right right, I'm kind of
(13:28):
I'm kind of like, ah, yep, yep. The I will
say that the bagel boom in the United States right
around the the mid to late nineties like significantly upped
our national per capita consumption. M but yeah, yeah, And
(13:48):
and speaking of UM, cheese consumption overall has been going
down a little bit in the United States the past
couple of years. Um. I think just as people are
a little bit more aware of how calorie dunce those
foods can be. UM. But but the cream cheese seems
to be a staple that is not going anywhere. Cream
(14:08):
cheese is here to stay. Yeah, but but how did
we get out of here? Yes, Lauren, even even virtually
we are on the same page. Yeah we are. Um.
But yes, we will get into that history. But first
(14:29):
we're going to take a quick break for a word
from our sponsor, and we're back. Thank you sponsored, Yes,
thank you. So. Cream cheese predecessor, the European neu Chatel cheese,
(14:49):
goes all the way back to ten five, though the
first record of it doesn't appear until Free. It originated
in Normandy, France, in a small village called Neuchatel Opre.
Here's the name. Um. And it was a cow cheese
that was a bit harder than cream cheese, a bit grainier. Um.
It was eaten fresh or slightly aged. It had these
(15:10):
notes of like mushrooms and nuts, um, salty, savory cheese.
This is all what I got from reading articles about it.
I am notoriously bad at describing how things taste. But
also I've never had it. Um uh. And yeah that's
that could probably be its own episode, but probably yeah
yeah um. And if you jump all the way into
(15:30):
ninety nine, the cheese was given the AOC in France,
which again is sort of that like France, we have
saying it's only this and it has to be from here,
and it has to have these ingredients at this percentage,
and a national designation of what that is. Yeah yeah,
and uh, French neuchatel is is still a whole kind
(15:51):
of separate category. Um. It's made with whole rock, how's milk.
It's got a soft bloomed rind, like like a brie
or a camembert. Um. Sometimes it comes in a heart
shape us supposedly first made by French dairymaids who are
trying to woo English soldiers during the Hundred Years War.
Oh yeah, yeah, um traditionally made um that that savory,
(16:13):
earthy rhyne should encase this creamy and yeah, just slightly
grainy interior that's got a little bright papalactic acid to it.
Um and and yeah here in the US, I think
I've only ever seen nou chatel like package the same
way that our cream cheese is and sometimes sold as
like low fat cream cheese because it's um supposed to
(16:36):
have between fat as opposed to the over thirty three
that cream cheese is supposed to have. So uh yeah,
there you go, just Americans mucking about with stuff again.
As we want to do. Yeah, And also I do
love that that we looked up how to say that
word because nouch chatel, Because I'm pretty sure that every
(16:58):
time I saw it on packaging before now I've just
been like confused and just my brain went, I don't know,
acts a lottle what sure, let's move on? Um yeah, yeah,
your brain was just like nat Nope, unimportant. I will
say what I know. We did look it up and
the version we're saying is the English pronunciation, So just
(17:22):
put that out there. Cool cool, cool cool cool. So
the earliest documentation of cream cheese goes back to England
and three um, but I couldn't find any other documentation
of that other than this phrase appeared in England at
(17:43):
that time from the Marion Webster Dictionary, so I it
probably wasn't the same thing at all. Yeah, that there
are a few, um a few descriptors of these types
of soft um soft cheeses, soft fresh cheeses that run
around various parts of Europe that had cows, and we're
making cheese um for for all of this intervening time
(18:07):
from from like the eleventh century up through the mid
sixteenth century, mid to late sixteenth century. And it's a
little bit hard to to suss out whether they were
just talking about like any old soft rind cheese like this,
or if it was like a specific product that we
would recognize as being that today. I think it's the former. Um.
(18:28):
But yeah, at any rate, yes, at any rate. The
history of cream cheese in the United States begins sometime
in the eighteen seventies with a farmer in New York
named William Lawrence. Lawrence grew up working as a farm
hand for his improverished family, eventually going on to marry
a farmer's daughter, and he and many of the farmers
(18:49):
around him made nou chatel cheese, UM, sending these wrapped
up rolls of it to the city. UM. One day, UM,
this fancy grocer a pre coach Lawrence and requested that
he make a pricier de luxe version. So what did
you do? What did Lawrence do? Essentially, he added more fat,
(19:11):
He took curdled milk and pressed as much of the
liquid out as he could and replaced that liquid with cream,
and he went with the obvious name cream cheese. There
you go, there you go. And cream cheese did start
as a high price luxury item well to do diners
might request. In New York City, more and more farmers
started making their own cream cheeses, which impacted the price.
(19:34):
A pound of cream cheese cost thirty cents in eighty nine.
In nineteen o nine it rose to forty cents a pound. Um.
And it was wrapped in foil from these early days.
If you've ever bought it in that type of packaging
and wondered why such a weird, fussy, kind of difficult
piece of packaging exists in these are modern times, you
(19:56):
can you can thank the late eighteen hundreds. Yes, I
have wondered that, Why am I struggling with this? Um?
Enter Alva Reynolds, the cheese broker, not to fix the packaging,
but to you know, yeah, yes, he's just entering, Yes,
this outline. Um. He came to Lawrence with an offer
(20:19):
to distribute Lawrence's product under the name Philadelphia Cream Cheese.
Not because the cheese came from Philadelphia, Nope, because it doesn't. Didn't,
but Pennsylvania and particularly Philadelphia, was well known. They were
both well known for producing the best cheeses at the times. Jesus,
(20:43):
So it seems like there's a lot of fraudulent marketing
in cheese. I feel like every cheese episode we've done,
I've been like what, yeah, it's like and then they
lied to us to get us to buy more cheese,
when really they just had to say it's cheese and
it would have been like cool, I'm into cheese. Uh yeah.
(21:07):
Lawrence had begun his cream cheese work in eighteen seventy two,
which is why Philadelphia brand cream Cheese still bears that date. Um. Really,
the brand name itself wasn't used until eighty, which I
guess is more like cheese marketing lies. But that's cool anyway.
(21:28):
Cheese marketing lies is the spinoff show we need. That's
our true crime. That's our true crime show. Yes, Oh,
I would be so into it. Alright, alright, Um. Soon enough,
Lawrence couldn't keep up with the man, so Reynolds went
to other dairy farmers and brought them in to the
(21:51):
Philadelphia Cream Cheese fold, selling all of their products under
the same name. Um. Still not quite enough, and Reynolds
started his own farm. He called it the Phoenix Cheese Company,
and by nineteen o five he was already heavily marketing
his products and Lawrence by the way, was elected mayor
(22:11):
of Chester, New York in eight Yeah. Good for him, Yeah,
getting involved in local politics. Love it. Yeah yeah. I
read his obituary. It sounded like he also invented some
other things interesting guy um in Enix cream cheese became
a part of the fairly newly established Craft Cheese company,
(22:35):
which I know. We've touched on that in several episodes.
James L. Craft invention of cheese pastoration became integral to
the process of making Philadelphia cream cheese. This is also
around the time that cream cheese is price dropped in
the first round of ads for Yankee cream cheese ran
and the Yiddish press. And also around this time, a
(22:55):
New York cheese distributor and manufacturer named break Stones started
average I higher fat cream cheese to the Jewish community.
Your Blintzes will taste much better with Breakstones cream cheese.
The copy read things like that. Yeah yeah. Breakstones now
known mostly for for their sour cream um and their
cottage cheese products. But um, but but yeah interestingly brief
(23:20):
Breakstones side note um one of the uh foremost experts
on cream cheese out there, um is this uh this
Rabbi Oh my goodness by the name of Jeffrey Marks,
and yeah, he's he's a distant relative of the Breakstones
and learned that and so started researching stuff about cream cheese,
(23:43):
thinking like having heard a rumor that the Breakstones were
the originators of cream cheese as we know it, um,
which was untrue. But then he just got so into
learning about cream cheese that now he's like invited to
come lecture on cream cheese and he's written all these
articles about cream cheese. He's he's pretty great anyway. Yeah.
I I do love when we're researching a topic and
(24:07):
one name comes up over now the experts, and like,
just how do you become that expert? Where like everybody's like,
he's the cream cheese guy. Get him on the line.
That's we we got to talk about cream cheese, so
we need him. Yep. Yeah, I mean here we are
mentioning him. I love it. Yeah. Yeah. Uh. The end
(24:29):
of the nineteen twenties and beginning of the nineteen thirties
is also when the relationship between bagels and cream cheese
blossomed and cemented in the United States. Prior to that,
like we discussed in our Bagel episode Bagels were tougher
and thinner in the hole in the center was huge. Um,
not really ideal for spreading cream cheese. But with wheat
(24:51):
flour bagels, that all changed. I'll tell you that this
relationship is so just cemented here. I found, like researching
cream cheese, I found more articles on bagelsh Like absolutely,
they just popped up and I wasn't looking for them,
And it would be like the history of the bagel
(25:11):
with a little bit about about cream cheese. Yeah, yeah,
it's definitely. It's definitely a like like peanut butter and
jelly level association here. And uh yeah, as I think
we did talk about in that bagel episode, um, wheat
flour was more an American thing than it had been
in some of the countries um where bagels originated in
(25:34):
in Europe, um where uh rye flower would have been
a little bit more likely to have been used. So yeah,
we's it's a little bit fluffier. So yeah, well for
your bagel. Um, well, let's step back a bit to
the nine hundreds when we see the first recipes for
cream cheese pie and cream cheese cakes in American recipe books.
(25:56):
Um in cheesecake so curreal forward after a cheesecake made
from cream cheese from New York, from a New York
deli one at that year's World Fare New York Cheesecake.
Oh yeah, and this I definitely want to do a
whole episode about. I. I have just a little bit
(26:18):
of an aside I couldn't help myself. Um, cheesecake might
be one of my favorite It's it's way up there
in terms of favorite desserts. Like, it's one of the
few things that I crave really hard. Um. But yeah,
so so brief aside um. The idea of making cakes
from fresh cheeses had been around for a long heck
in time, it probably came over to America with Italian immigrants. Um.
(26:41):
And those sorts of things go all the way back
to like the second century BC in Rome, possibly even
further than that in Greek cuisine. Um. But yeah, New
York cheesecake happened thanks to cream cheese. Um. And over
the next couple of decades, from from into the nine
thirties and forties, it would become this very popular New
(27:01):
York City delhi and diner dessert, made famous by places
like Lyndy's in the Theater District and Rubens and one
Duncan Hines, who was a real person, which I did
not know that thing. Um, but cooler if I did know,
I've completely forgotten it and got to be pleasantly surprised again. Um.
He published a recipe for Lyndy's version in three So cute, uh,
(27:28):
He wrote, as I write this, gold is worth somewhere
around thirty two dollar announce Lindy's cheesecake at forty cents
a slice is somewhat less expensive, yet a good Many
people who have eaten at Lynda's famous Broadway restaurant consider
it pure gold. Oh, I love it. I think we
(27:48):
were when we were going to Lexington one of our
field trips, and I was like planning out the road
trip we tried to go to there's a Duncan museum. Yeah,
now I remember totally. Yeah. One day A sort of
related to all of this, In the nineteen hundreds, Craft
(28:08):
started publishing recipes utilizing Philadelphia cream cheese after they purchased
it in magazines, further popularizing it across the United States.
These recipes ranged from all kinds of things. Yes, the dips,
the cast roles, the cheesecakes, the stuffings. Um, and I
feel like that comes up a lot in these two
where I've just never appreciated the impact these sort of
(28:30):
companies sponsored magazines had, Yeah, like cultural on our entire dietary,
like preference that it's really wild. Yeah yeah, Um, I
still have that banana one you you let me borrow? Yeah? Yeah? Um. Bagels,
(28:51):
cream cheese and locks seems to have been associated seems
to have become associated with the Jewish community in the
nineteen forties. Um, as we mentioned in our what episode
was it? It's one of my favorite quotes, And I
was racking my brains trying to remember the history of
the carrot cake. It must have been episode Yeah is
really murky, And I found this quote from a cake
(29:13):
expert that said, like, basically it was her Moby Day.
Like I love like the mystery of the curroate cake.
But the first known recorded instance of using cream cheese
frosting to cover curate cake comes from an American recipe
book dating back to the nineteen sixties. Yes, um, but
(29:34):
American recipes had been calling for serving um like sweet
breakfast breads like banana nutbread with spreads of cream cheese
as early as the nineteen thirties, So I think that
there was probably just some kind of like slow evolution
of that type of cake and those type of quick breads, um,
and and that type of frosting getting just sweeter and sweeter. Yes,
(29:58):
oh yeah. UM. Philadelphia cream cheese was introduced to the
UK in the nineteen sixties as well. UM tubs of
Philadelphia cream cheese became available in nineteen seventy and those
foil wrappers most of us are familiar with the come
in those. UM. In nineteen seventy seven, the company debuted
Philadelphia Light. As we mentioned in our Imitation Crab episode. UM,
(30:22):
this whole thing of making sushi palatable to Americans, this
was just a big push in the nineteen eighties. UM
involved a lot of cream cheese. Oh yes, that's still man.
Are you ever like reading a sushi menu and and
and like the description of a role and you get
to that one ingredient that just makes you go whoah oh? No,
(30:46):
cream cheese is that for me? That's I used to
really love it. I do find it very funny that
the Philadelphia role, which almost always has cream cheese, does
not Philadelphia cream cheese doesn't come from Philadelphia. UM, but
I suppose the name is still Philadelphia, so I guess
(31:07):
that's legit. It's still it's still Yeah, it's like a
pun I guess kind of yeah, because it's probably that
brand like, yeah, I don't know, makes six out of ten. Um,
I will and no shade on anyone who likes cream
cheese in their sushi. You do what makes you happy. Um.
I used to be very fond of it when I
was younger, so I don't know, Yeah, yeah, it is.
(31:29):
It was interesting to read um sort of this like
nostalgic brand loyalty to Philadelphia cream cheese. And I read
several articles where people were the writer was trying to
get to the bottom of why that is. And it
was interesting to hear chefs say, you know, it might
not be my favorite, but it's just consistent, and I
know most people use it um and so they'll use
(31:52):
it to test recipes or whatever. And I just thought
that was interesting. I never really thought about that aspect
of it before. When a brand is so, you know,
that's probably what people are going to use when you
say cream cheese, So you're going to test your recipes
with that? Yeah, oh yeah, I never thought about that before.
I guess, Um, gosh, there there there was this this
(32:16):
amazing and when I if I'm in a grocery store,
I'm probably going to go for Philadelphia Brown cream cheese. Um.
This is not sponsored by them. I'm just making a statement. UM,
but my preference if I if I can, is to
go to a deli or a bagel place and get
their cream cheese that is probably sourced from some awesome
(32:37):
dairy somewhere. Mm hmm yeah yeah stuff. Uh wow. Speaking
of Philadelphia cream cheese, that line introduced several new products
in the first decade of the two thousand's, like mini tubs,
Philadelphia Extra Light, new flavors like garden Vegetables, basil our basil.
(32:59):
The packaging went through a redesign just always involved evolving
always um. And then um there was that whole um
uh cream cheese tea thing that happened over the past
couple of years. Um that uh that like like like
Asian cafe um, like like Japanese and Korean cafe trend
(33:21):
of um using cream cheese to make like a sort
of like a like a foamy thick whipped topping. UM.
For I've mostly seen it on hot teas. I think
that I suppose I'm not sure. I'm not sure if
it goes on cold beverages as well. Um, I I know,
I know, like I'm sweet hut here in Atlanta has
some cream cheese teas. I don't think I've ever had
(33:44):
it because I was always like, I don't know if
I want that, And now that I think about it,
it's probably delicious. Like I love the flavor of cream cheese.
I like like a good like hot milk tea. So man,
I've been I've been missing out the craving of the episode.
I didn't know that's what it was going to be here.
You go, all right, well, listeners right in let us
(34:07):
know about your experiences with that and speaking of that's
about what we have on cream cheese for today. But
we do have listener mail, we do. But first we've
got one more quick break for a word from our sponsor.
(34:28):
And we're back. Thank you, sponsor, Yes, thank you, and
we're back with me. I'm you know, smooth. It is
not necessarily my thing. I did appreciate when you said
I was smoothed. Uh, but you know, I gave it
a dry That's how I see it. No, I liked it,
(34:51):
and it was kind of you. You were making a
gesture that's sort of sort of like a like a schmear,
like a yeah, I was putting the cream cheese on
the yeah. Yeah. Okay. So we have a letter from Alicia,
who has been embarking on a journey of binging all
of our episodes, has been just sending us. I know
(35:14):
we've read some of our letters before, but I love
it updating on what episodes she's seen and her thoughts
on them. So Alicia wrote about our our recent re
release of the Mocktail episode. This episode reminded me of
the mocktail that is featured in the sixth book of
the series of Unfortunate Events, The Rats Elevator, the Aqueous Martini.
(35:36):
This drink was essentially cold water within all of it.
Within the bottle are children were with Esme and Jerome Squalor.
This was considered the very in drink in a fashionable society.
No surprise that the kids didn't like it, which side note,
I love that and that is so funny. It's a
(35:57):
very good commentary on like what yes, yes, uh. Then
she wrote about Thousand Islands dressing. I live in the
Thousand Islands. This was created to be served with fish
when fishing was a large part of the area. However,
the town that it belongs to is wildly disputed up here. Okay,
m hmmm. In a barbecue episode, there was talk of
(36:20):
eating alligator. The New York State Fair has a booth
every year where you can eat alligator on a stick.
Along with that, they offer wild board and kangaroo. Once
I got over the fear that kangaroo Jack and his
friends weren't going to drop kick me for eating at
I decided is the best thing I have ever eaten.
Coffee commercial because I enjoy your silly funds and jokes.
(36:41):
I was a bit disappointed that the phrase wasn't if
my coffee is weak, then I am weak. But don't matter.
I have a new silly coffee model for you. I
grind my coffee fresh daily And with that being said,
you gotta grind those beans if you want to grind
those dreams. I love it. I'm in Yeah. It makes
(37:02):
me feel like my morning cup of coffees like so badass,
as opposed to what it is right now, which is
kind of just like, oh God, get me caffeine. Yeah yeah, please,
as soon as possible, pour it into my eyeballs. How
does it get in faster? Yeah, yeah, that's how I feel.
(37:25):
Um um, Hayward wrote, as a key West resident, I
was amazed how many times you mentioned key West without
giving it any credit. This Miami or Tampa thing is
utter bs. Miami did not even exist and the Tampa
cigar makers moved there from Key West. As far as
the US goes, the Cuban sandwich was made for key
(37:48):
West cigar makers lunch long before either Tampa or Miami
didn't even exist. And there is no salami in an
authentic Cuban sandwich. Again, that is just newbie b s
dang another city in the phrase, Oh I love this,
(38:08):
I love this so much. Oh my heck. Um. Also,
I will say that my friend Cody, who is from
Central Florida, um uh, told me very firmly that that
um that salami is an unauthentic human sandwich and that
anything else this is awesome. I love how many people
(38:30):
are so like, no, this is sort of the Cuban town.
I just had it. This is what it is. And
I actually responded to Hayward, and he responded back with
more points. Yeah, oh that's great, yep, please keep those coming.
We love it. Oh yeah, well, we adore a strong opinion.
(38:50):
If you did not know that about us, Yes, yes,
and you can send those two us. We would love
to get them. Thanks to both of these listeners for
already doing so. If you'd like to email us, our
email is Hello at savor pod dot com. We are
also on social media. You can find us on Facebook, Twitter,
and Instagram at savor pod, and we do hope to
hear from you. Savor is a production of I Heart Radio.
(39:13):
For more podcasts my heart Radio, you can visit the
i heart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen
to your favorite shows. Thanks as always to your super
producers Dylan Fagin and Andrew Howard. Thanks to you for listening,
and we hope that lots more good things are coming
your way.
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