Who invented cheese whiz

In , he became the senior research program manager for the Food Research Institute at the University of Wisconsin at Madison, where he was instrumental in helping fund projects dealing with additives and contamination of meat products. Moody Blues drummer and co-founder Graeme Edge dies at Sylvere Lotringer, intellectual who infused U.

All Sections. About Us. Besides the financial windfall, Kraft cheese became instantly recognizable to a whole generation of young American men. Two and half decades and another World War later, Kraft Cheese had become a worldwide brand.

Welsh rarebit or perhaps Welsh rabbit dates to 18th century England, but the specific origins of it are somewhat unknown. One legend says it was invented almost as a joke, a dish served after an unsuccessful rabbit hunt. Others say it simply was a tavern food, a cheap and tasty treat enjoyed by drunks - like an s century version of cheese fries.

Despite its rather meaty sounding name, the dish contains none. It is made by pouring a cheddar cheese sauce sometimes mixed with beer, wine or ale over a piece of hearty toast, like pumpernickel or rye.

Though that all sounds easy enough, the making of the cheese sauce can be laborious and tedious due to all the melting and stirring. Kraft figured there had to be a better way. Conscious of their English market, in , Kraft began development on a pre-packaged cheese sauce for use on Welsh rarebit.

In , Kraft introduced the product in Britain. It was a hit. There are few things that seem more American than Cheez Whiz, though not necessarily for the best reasons. Swiss cheese makers first developed commercially processed cheese in According to food scientists , Walter Gerbe and Fritz Stettler were trying to figure out a way to make cheese that lasted longer and did not spoil quickly.

Kraft that holds the first US patent for processed cheese. What Kraft leaves out in the patent, however, is his addition of a sodium additive. This is perhaps due to the patent being public and Kraft wanting to hide his secret. Southworth had been part of the team that created Cheez Whiz in the early s. The mission had been to come up with a speedy alternative to the cheese sauce used in making Welsh rarebit, a popular but laborious dish that required a half-hour or more of cooking before it could be poured over toast.

It took them a year and a half of sustained effort to get the flavor right, but when they did, they succeeded in creating one of the first megahits in convenience foods. Southworth and his wife, Betty, became lifelong fans and made it part of their daily routine. And it went well at night with crackers and a little martini. It went down very, very nicely, if you wanted to be civilized. Cheez Whiz was already something of a horror to nutritionists.

Sit down with a drink in front of the TV and start heaping it onto salty, buttery crackers, and both daily limits would quickly be blown. As for its taste, Southworth conceded that the spread had never been in the same league as a fine English Stilton.

In the laboratories at Kraft, in fact, Cheez Whiz had been designed to have the mildest flavor possible for the broadest public appeal. Spoon it, heat it, spread it. Nonetheless, in his kitchen that day, Southworth knew that something had changed. Staring at the label, parsing the list of ingredients, he eventually found the culprit, though not without some effort. There were 27 items listed in all, starting with the watery by-product of milk called whey, taking him through canola oil, corn syrup, and an additive called milk protein concentrate, which manufacturers had begun importing from other countries as a cost-cutting alternative to the higher-priced powdered milk produced by American dairies.

One crucial ingredient was missing, however. From its earliest days, Cheez Whiz always contained real cheese. Real cheese gave it class and legitimacy, Southworth said, not to mention flavor. Not surprisingly, Kraft kept this change to itself. Actually, a spokeswoman told me, there was still some cheese left in the formula, just not as much as there used to be.

When I asked how much, she declined to say. It no longer appeared on the label, she added, because Kraft — in attempting to simplify its long lists of ingredients — had switched from citing components, like cheese, to listing their parts, like milk.