FOOD HISTORY: Cream Cheese

In the US and probably world wide, cream cheese is usually associated with being spread on a bagel (with or without lox or smoked salmon) and is thought to have  been brought to the US by Jewish immigrants. However, it is really an American product developed by a non - Jew who played around with another cheese that had an ancient history; the French  Neufchatel cheese from which cream cheese evolved. Neufchatel, a cows milk  cheese, is argued to be the oldest cheese from Normandy, France where texts indicate that cheeses were produced in the Neufchatel en - Bray countryside as early as 1036 AD. It is known that since the middle ages, that Neufchatel made cheeses had many shapes depending on the molds that were available to each cheese maker. During the 100 years war between France and England (1337-1453) many French women gave Neufchatel made cheeses, molded in  heart  shapes, to the English soldiers with whom they were in love. The soldiers brought these cheeses back to England. While the official name  "Neufchatel" for these cheeses was "born" in the ledgers of the Saint - Anand Abby in Rouen, France in 1543, the "officially unnamed"  cheeses that were  brought to England by the soldiers were being improved  by English cheese makers. This was done by adding small amounts of cream to the milk from which the cheese was made. These "cream"  cheeses became very popular in England. When colonists from England migrated to America, they brought with them their love of this cheese and the knowledge and skill needed to make them. Many settled in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, an area known for its dairies. Because these cheeses  were expensive to make and spoiled easily, they were usually made by small farms and only for local consumption. Therefore, they didn't get much beyond Philadelphia and environs. With the introduction of the railroads and advances in refrigeration, the cheese could be brought farther away from Philadelphia. In 1847, the cheese reached New York, where the newspapers announced that "cream cheese" from Philadelphia had come to the New York market and " It is round, generally from six to ten inches in diameter, and about one inch thick". In the early 1870's, William Alfred Lawrence, a farmer and cheese maker from Chester, NY, purchased from a French businessman, a failing factory for the production of Neufchatel cheese and called it the Empire Company. This was just at the time when there was an increased demand for farm fresh products and a growing upper and  middle class who liked to eat "fancy cheeses" including Neufchatel. In spite of this, the quality of Neufchatel cheese in  America was very variable in quality. While in France, the ripening process took weeks, in the interest of greater profit, American producers shipped or sold the cheese the day it was made. In 1873, a fancy NY delicatessen, Park and Tilford, asked Lawrence to come up with a new, rich cheese that they could sell. Lawrence added salt and more cream  to his Neufchatel cheese recipe (increasing the fat content  from 4 to 6%), packaged it in squares instead of the usual rounds, and called it "Cream Cheese". Lawrence's NY distributor, Alvah Reynolds marketed the new product by packaging it in aluminum foil and re-branded it as "Philadelphia Cream Cheese", taking advantage of Philadelphia's reputation for high quality dairies. This marketing was highly successful and the demand for this new cheese skyrocketed. Lawrence continued to improve his cheese. In the next few decades, with increases in technology, the process of making cream cheese allowed the fat content to be stabilized at 33% whereas, American Neufchatel cheese contains only 23%. In 1892, Alvah Reynolds bought the Empire company in order to go into production  for himself and, in 1903,  he sold his Philadelphia brand to the Phoenix Cheese Company which later  merged with Kraft Foods. While there are many brands of cream cheese being made and sold today, none is as popular as Philadelphia brand cream cheese which  is still sold in 80 countries through the Mondelez International Company, the name of the Kraft Foods  new worldwide snack  company.