(Jewish Group) Why the story of cream cheese is the story of Jews in America

When it comes to “bagels and lox,” the cream cheese is essential but goes without mention. Like the marinara sauce in “spaghetti and meatballs,” it plays a leading role but gets no top billing. Still, a tart, bright red tomato sauce gets noticed. Cream cheese, however, inspires no secret nonna recipes. Even Jewish gourmands who demand the freshest of hand-rolled bagels and the most pristine razor slim Nova will settle for a generic schmear.

Recently, I got curious about the glob of Philadelphia on my New York bagel. Online, I discovered that the cream cheese is not an old-world Jewish creation but rather a modern product developed from previous recipes in the 1870s by an upstate New York gentile named William Lawrence. As for the “Philadelphia” branding, it was a marketing ploy by New York salesmen, taking advantage of Philly’s 19th-century reputation for artisanal cheeses.

The world’s pre-eminent cream cheese expert is Jeffrey Marx, rabbi emeritus of Santa Monica Synagogue, a reform temple. In 2017, Marx authored a chapter in the book “Tastes of Faith: Jewish Eating in the United States.” Aside from dispelling cream cheese misconceptions, he carefully laid out the myriad historical and technological factors that allowed the first Jew to bite into a bagel and lox in New York in the late 1920s.

According to Marx, the bagel arrived from Eastern Europe in the 1890s, but before it could be sliced and filled, its hole had to be narrowed and softened. In addition, Pacific Northwest fish magnates had to find a way to freight salmon across North America. Finally, Mr. Lawrence of Chester, New York, needed to master new mechanization technologies to create a high-fat content version of Neufchâtel cheese. By the 1920s, all these ingredients were widely available and marketed in New York City, where the large Eastern European Jewish community was waiting.

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