Did you know? Philadelphia cream cheese was born in Upstate NY and there’s a whole

If you’re eating a bagel with a Philadelphia cream cheese schmear while you read this, you can thank Upstate New York.

Yes, Philadelphia Cream Cheese was invented in New York, not the city of brotherly love, though some Philadelphians may refute that claim.

Local folklore says the cream cheese came from Philadelphia, NY, just northeast of Fort Drum. It’s even mentioned on the town website, but others claim its just a myth.

According to world-renowned cream cheese expert Rabbi Jeffrey Marx, in 1872, a dairy farmer named William Lawrence from Chester, experimented with increasing the cream content in his cheese recipe. This resulted in the creation of a rich, new product simply called “cream cheese.”

When the soft cheese proved to be enough of a success in Orange County, New York cheese broker Alvah Reynolds pitched Lawrence the idea of naming it after Philadelphia. By 1880, the Pennsylvania city had made a name for itself as a goldmine of dairy products and a hotbed of cheesy commodities. Naming it after this area could make it synonymous with high quality.

Philadelphia cream cheese hit the market and you know the rest of the story.

Fast forward to present day, Philadelphia-brand cream cheese is now a Kraft Foods Group brand and is produced at the nation’s largest cream cheese plant, Kraft Heinz in Lowville.

The Lewis County town holds an annual Cream Cheese Festival celebrating the tangy, soft fromage.

This year’s festival will be held from 11am to 6pm on Saturday, September 21, 2024 in downtown Lowville. Admission to the event is free.

This annual celebration is one of the most fun and wacky fall festivals held in the North Country. In the past, the event has had contests such as Lick It Clean (involving ice cream), a cow milking contest, cream cheese Plinko and Dress like a Farmer Contest.

In 2013 at the ninth annual festival, celebrity chef Duff Goldman was in attendance to help unveil a seven-foot-wide, 31-inch-deep cheesecake, declared the world’s biggest that year by Guinness World Records. The 6,900-pound cheesecake contained more than three tons of cream cheese, sugar, graham crackers and butter — serving up about 24,533 slices.

Officials said the festival annually creates the largest cheesecake in the country: a 1,200-pound cheesecake which makes 3,500 slices.

If baking a behemoth is not in your wheelhouse, there each year the festival hosts a recipe contest which requires all submissions to contain Kraft Philadelphia cream cheese as an ingredient. Participants can visit the plant to submit their written recipe and are given six blocks of cream cheese to prepare their foods for the contest.

Recipes are split into dessert and non-dessert categories. Winners include everything from cream cheese ice cream to hot chili.

The festival will also have live music, food, and a children’s play park.