‘although so called, is not properly cheese, but is nothing more than cream dried sufficiently to be cut with a knife’. Thus Mrs Beeton in 1861. Her comment was pertinent in that the simplest form of cream cheese is made by draining cream through a muslin and leaving it for a few days until it becomes as firm as butter. But what is normally offered as cream cheese is produced in a more sophisticated manner, and is rarely made from cream alone. Cremets d'Anjou, for example have an addition of egg white.
Most kinds of cream cheese are made from a mixture of cream and milk, inoculated with lactic acid-producing bacteria chosen to produce the desired degree of acidity, or as in the case of mascarpone, curdled with lemon juice. The mixture may or may not need rennet to precipitate the curd. Although the bacteria are allowed some time in which to do their work, a cream cheese is not matured. Most commercial varieties are pasteurized, to kill the bacteria once their work is done.
The most important cream cheese, in terms of quantity, must be Philadelphia cream cheese; it has for long been the principal American variety, and cream cheeses are said to account for a quarter of all the cheese eaten in the USA. Cream cheese is defined in the USA as having a minimum fat content of 33%; in Britain it must be between 45% and 65% (over that and it is officially double cream cheese), and in France cream cheese must be at least 55% fat while double crème and triple crème have a minimum content of 60% and 75% respectively. See Explorateur for some examples of super-rich, lightly ripened cheeses. A cream cheese such as Fontainebleau is often eaten for dessert, with sugar. Fromage frais may be a cream cheese or may have a lower fat content; it is, however, invariably cream textured and, as the name implies, uncured. Petit suisse is a cream-enriched fresh cheese, first made in Normandy in the mid-19th century. The Swiss connection is its inventor, a Mme Heroult, who came from Switzerland.
The Scottish caboc, known since the 15th century, was Sir Walter Scott's favourite kind of cheese. It became extinct but has been revived as a rich cream cheese, made from double cream and given a crust of toasted pinhead oatmeal. It comes in ‘logs’ of 120 g (4 oz).
Alan Davidson was a distinguished author and publisher, and one of the world's best-known writers on fish and fish cookery. In 1975 he retired early from the diplomatic service—after serving in, among other places, Washington, Egypt, Tunisia, and Laos, where he was British Ambassador—to pursue a fruitful second career as a food historian and food writer extraordinaire. Among his popular books are Seafood of South-East Asia, North Atlantic Seafood, and Mediterranean Seafood. In 2003, shortly before his death, he was awarded the Erasmus Prize for his contribution to European culture.
