On Food and Cooking

(Barry) #1

unripened materials. It began as a kind of
resolidified, long-keeping fondue made from
trimmings of genuine cheeses that were
unsaleable due to partial defects or damage.
The first industrial attempts to melt together a
blend of shredded cheeses were made at the
end of the 19th century. The key insight — the
necessity of “melting salts” analogous to the
tartaric acid and citric acid in a fondue’s wine
or lemon juice — came in Switzerland in



  1. Five years later, the American company
    Kraft patented a combination of citric acid
    and phosphates, and a decade after that it
    brought out the popular cheddar look-alike
    Velveeta.
    Today, manufacturers use a mixture of
    sodium citrate, sodium phosphates, and
    sodium polyphosphates, and a blend of new,
    partly ripened, and fully ripened cheeses. The
    polyphosphates (negatively charged chains of
    phosphorus and oxygen atoms that attract a
    cloud of water molecules) not only remove

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