The Molecular Secrets of Cream Cheese

Roland Piquepaille writes "The June issue of Wired Magazine carries a story about one of the two university labs in the U.S. dedicated to cream cheese research. This one is -- where else? -- in Madison, Wisconsin, where researchers are exploring the molecular mysteries of cream cheese. You may not know, but this cheese is tricky to produce because the acid-secreting bacteria used to coagulate the milk need to be killed at the right time. The researchers are now writing a guidebook about the secrets of cream cheese, a book which will be available to anyone, in a process similar to the open source movement for software. For more information, please read the entertaining article of Wired magazine, 'Schmear Campaign' or this summary to discover little-known facts about cream cheese."

As a former Wisconsonite...

[daeg]

As a former resident of Wisconsin, cheese is big business. Huge, in fact. Government grants for cheese and other dairy research are nothing new to the University of Wisconsin. Sure, it might appear like a drain on money, but by doing the research in a public setting it benefits all dairy producers whereas private research only benefits the company or co-op sponsoring it. To justify it all you have to do is imagine the tax benefits of even a few percentage points of additional dairy production.

Besides, I back all agricultural research. Food will become the next major world commodity (aside from fuel). It's easy to make potable water, but trying to compensate year after year of lackluster arable ground is foolish. The United States is one, if not the, top contender for arable land and our rank will only increase as the floodplains of the Asian countries are flooded with ocean water with rising sea levels. Seven billion people have to eat somehow.

Re:Science gone amuck again

[Anonymous Coward]

With the rate of people dying of cancer actually decreasing, your claim that people dieing of cancer seems dubious.

Laugh all you want

[Deagol]

Our second cow is a few days away from having her calf ("freshening" as it's known to dairy folks). My wife's the primary cheese maker of the house, and one of her greatest challenges has been perfecting cream cheese. We've got most of the other basic cheeses down: mozzarella, cheddar, parmesean, feta, jack, and a couple others. But cream cheese has been a constant challenge, and it's a constant frustration since we *love* cheesecake.

mmmmmm... cheesecake

I grew up near Kraft...

[ruiner13]

I am from Glenview, Illinois, where Kraft has their HQ [kraft.com]. They have a nice R&D plant right in the middle of town, and one time, when I was growing up (I was maybe 11 or 12), my friends and I took a little hike through the wooded area behind it. There was a large storm drain coming out of the plant that led into the North Branch of the Chicago River. What startled my friends and me was the presence of a few guys in biohazard suits scribbing the walls of it off with a high-pressure hose of some kind. Whatever the secret ingredient is for their cream cheese, I hope it doesn't produce whatever they were scrubbing down!

Open-source cheese vs. proprietary cheese

[NPN_Transistor]

Kraft, which has been perfecting its Philadelphia-brand cheese for more than 75 years, closely guards its manufacturing secrets, keeping them in a vault in Chicago. What it knows, it isn't sharing... Brighenti is part of a push to make the secrets of cream cheese available to anyone.

Kraft has dominance on the cheese market and has a proprietary formula... some people are trying to make cheese available to everyone. Sounds a lot like the software industry. One company has dominance on the industry, and that company isn't willing to give away what the "ingredients" of the product are. A group of people are trying to make the product "available to anyone".

Open-source cheese isn't a crazy idea. There's already open-source beer. [voresoel.dk]

Re:Science gone amuck again

[sessamoid]

Even if you only look at Life Expectance at age 65, the US has been continuously improving for the last 100 years, and certainly has been higher than the four score and ten that you mention.

Quite true. Even as recently as the advent of the social security system in 1935, the average life expectancy of the working male was considerably under the 65 years of age set as "retirement" when they passed the Social Security Act. They weren't actually expecting most people to live long enough to draw benefits from the social security system. Only as the adult population has gotten older and older has the social security system become in danger of becoming insolvent.

Re:Nondairy cheeses a bigger challenge

[Valdrax]

While there are now excellent vegan alternatives for most everything, milk, ice cream, hot dogs, etc., cheese is really tough to get right.

I'll grant you ice cream. That's pretty good. I'll even grant you the milk substitutes as they can be good drinks in their own right (even if they taste nothing like milk), but I have never had a vegan hot dog that I could swallow the second bite of. Smart Dogs, Quorn Dogs, etc. are all just utterly horrible tasting.

*sigh* I long for a vegetarian substitute for bacon too so that I can have my favorite food without all the saturated fat. Cheese, however, there's never going to be a substitute for the real thing. Never. Anyone who enjoys cheeses and who seeks out cheeses that you don't find in the normal dairy section like Dubliner, Double Glouchester, Asagio Fresco (oh man), good Gouda, etc. knows that making a substitute for Kraft slices isn't the same as making a substitute for real cheese.

I'm a cheese connoisseur, so I don't have very high hopes for vegan cheese especially after the track record with vegans loving the so-called meat substitutes. If your standards are that low for making substitutes for things you hate, you aren't going to please the people who actually like those products. Just my two cents.