Philly guy here. My family called American cheese ‘cream cheese.’ I know, I know, but the guy at the mom and pop grocery on the corner knew exactly what we wanted, since others asked for it by that name too. I’m assuming we called it that because American cheese back then did seem very creamy. There weren’t too many cheeses small stores carried BITD. For many customers American cheese WAS square cheese, and the large, round, orange-colored cheese(Colby, more than likely) was called round cheese, simply based on their loaf shapes. To further complicate(?) things my grandmother called Swiss cheese ‘sweitzer’(I’m guessing at the spelling) cheese.
Sounds like Drexel Hill where my family moved in 1955. The only cheese that came in square blocks was American cheese. In addition to that, we would get Muenster, sweet Muenster, Swiss (which was Emmentaler), and a couple others. Clearly, the name square cheese disappeared sometime around 1960. Sic transit…
Was she German?
I’ve never heard the term “square cheese.” A random google search turned up this definition of square cheese:
Square Cheese (also known as Northstone) is a (you guessed it) a square-shaped cheese with a mottled natural rind. Underneath the rind, the paste has a flavor profile of herbs, grass, and toasted nuts, with a pleasing bit of goat milk pungency. Pairs well with a drizzle of sweet herbal honey.
I’ve never heard of that term. I grew up in Chicago in the 50s.
Old-timer here, from Wisconsin and other points MidWest. Never heard of square cheese. Ever. Until now. We stayed away from American cheese, since that was a corrupt product made by a corrupt company to corrupt and pervert our minds. We used longhorn or cheddar cheese – you know, the real stuff, from real moocows, not a petroleum by-product from a nylon refinery.
So far as I know, all American cheese is “process” or processed cheese, meaning it has been melted down, mixed with emulsifiers and other stuff to make it smooth and meltable, and reformed into blocks (and then sometimes sliced).
From the Wikipedia article on “American Cheese”:
Today’s American cheese is, by law, required to be manufactured from at least 2 types of cheese. Because its manufacturing process differs from “unprocessed”/raw/natural cheeses,[1] American cheese can not be legally sold under the name (authentic) “cheese” in the US. Instead, federal (and even some state) laws mandate that it be labeled as “processed cheese” if simply made from combining more than one cheese,[2] or “cheese food” if dairy ingredients such as cream, milk, skim milk, buttermilk, cheese whey, or albumin from cheese whey are added.[3] As a result, sometimes even the word “cheese” is absent, altogether, from the product’s labeling in favor of, e.g., “American slices” or “American singles”.
I asked Mrs. Napier, born in 1952 a couple miles from Center City Philadelphia and raised there, who has never lived more than a half hour from the city, AND who is a very good cook and fond of cheese steaks. She never heard of it either.
What the law says [emphasis mine]:
§ 133.169 Pasteurized process cheese.
(a)(1) Pasteurized process cheese is the food prepared by comminuting and mixing, with the aid of heat, one or more cheeses of the same or two or more varieties, except [a bunch of stuff]
So by law, it doesn’t have to be two types of cheese.
The optional additives to pasteurised process cheese are:
(d) The optional ingredients referred to in paragraph (a) of this section are:
(1) An acidifying agent consisting of one or any mixture of two or more of the following: A vinegar, lactic acid, citric acid, acetic acid, and phosphoric acid, in such quantity that the pH of the pasteurized process cheese is not below 5.3.
(2) Cream, anhydrous milkfat, dehydrated cream, or any combination of two or more of these, in such quantity that the weight of the fat derived therefrom is less than 5 percent of the weight of the pasteurized process cheese.
(3) Water.
(4) Salt.
(5) Harmless artificial coloring.
(6) Spices or flavorings, other than any which singly or in combination with other ingredients simulate the flavor of a cheese of any age or variety.
(7) Pasteurized process cheese in the form of slices or cuts in consumer-sized packages may contain an optional mold-inhibiting ingredient consisting of not more than 0.2 percent by weight of sorbic acid, potassium sorbate, sodium sorbate, or any combination of two or more of these, or consisting of not more than 0.3 percent by weight of sodium propionate, calcium propionate, or a combination of sodium propionate and calcium propionate.
(8) Pasteurized process cheese in the form of slices or cuts in consumer-sized packages may contain lecithin as an optional anti-sticking agent in an amount not to exceed 0.03 percent by weight of the finished product.
(9) Safe and suitable enzyme modified cheese.
We used to get it with flecks of (I think) pimento in it. It’s been a while since I’ve seen that variant.
There are different forms of that. Some with peppers, there’s one with bits of pepperoni and peppers in it, some form that resembles olive loaf based on cheese instead of bologna.
This thread has reminded me of a great variety of American cheese I rarely saw outside of the Philadelphia area called Sweet Munchee. It has a very sweet creamy flavor, much more flavorful than typical American.
I grew up in Philly til I was 9, then we moved 30 miles south to Bellefonte, DE where I lived until I was 16. American cheese was American cheese; I never heard of square cheese. And what you got on a cheesesteak was whatever that particular shop used; in my neighborhoods in those pre-cheese-whiz times it was usually provolone; steak sandwiches weren’t a “gourmet” thing back then.
Pizza places often used mozzarella, provolone was common. At some point American seemed to take over. The use of ‘wit whiz’ was the work of the Antichrist, though not as evil as the fake chopped and processed steak that seemed to dominate once you got past Exeter on Rt. 30 and made it’s way around the country. Eventually the noble sandwich known as a cheesesteak became the ‘Philly Cheesesteak’, an abomination of all that is holy. A relative sometimes brings me the genuine portioned steak meat from the Easton area. We have the cheesesteak’s lesser relative around here, the Steak N Cheese made from shaved steak, not awful, but still subordinate to the genuine article.
You can still get good cheese steaks in areas around Philly if you avoid the tourist traps. No “cheese whiz” or junk like that on them. Nice meat, peppers, onions, provolone, hot peppers if you want them. Even WaWa’s cheese steaks are better than the things they pass off to tourists.
The Chicago area also gets Mun-chee cheese. I had no idea it was supposed to be an American cheese, but looking it up, it appears to be so. It’s a light yellow cheese, right? Not orange like most American cheese (minus specifically white American cheese, of course.)
Yes, light yellow. White American is prevalent around here, it’s hard to get orange in anything but Singles.
Yeah, here the deli counter American cheese is pretty much always orange, with white often (but not always) being an option.
I grew up in south Jersey near Philly. (Go Flyers, Eagles and Phillies, forget the Sixers!). If you asked for American, you got white, square cheese. But I have no recollection of it ever being called square cheese. Most cheese is square, or rectangular, unless you’re talking provolone or mozzarella.
You were lucky, it wasn’t a threat or a joke with mine… :eek:
And never heard of square cheese growing up on Long Island.
Nope, Italian through and through. She did work with several German ladies at a dress factory(Go ILGWU!!!) BITD, so the term might’ve come from there.
DEFINITELY stay away from the Philly tourist trap steak places, as noted upthread. The further you get away from them, the better the cheesesteaks become. :smack: