It’s not easy to extract a large plastic syringe that’s submerged in a tub of very firm cream cheese, but Mercedes Brighenti performs the task with elegance and precision. The sleeves of her white lab coat are rolled up, her long dark hair is pulled back, and her silver watch is pushed up on her slender arm. Still, the final tug flings little globs of cheese around the university lab – one of only two in the US with a cream cheese research program. Cheese-filled test tubes bubble nearby, and a small iron-clad oven fills the air with the smell of burnt dairy products. Brighenti has the lab to herself this afternoon. An embarrassed look creeps over her face. A clump of cream cheese dangles from her hair. “I think people like to keep their distance when I do my research,” the 29-year-old Argentinean says.

Brighenti is exploring the spread-ability and texture of cream cheese. She uses the syringe to inject 5 milliliters of the stuff into a small shatterproof dish and presses a button on a nearby computer. A clear plastic wedge smashes into the white mass, which is smushed and compacted. A graph depicting its load-bearing capabilities ripples onto the computer monitor.

Brighenti smiles. She’s a step closer to unraveling the molecular mysteries of cream cheese. Until now, little has been published about the chemical interactions involved in its production. Over the years, individual manufacturers have been accumulating know-how through trial and error. Kraft, which has been perfecting its Philadelphia-brand cheese for more than 75 years, closely guards its manufacturing secrets, keeping them in a vault in Chicago. What it knows, it isn’t sharing. The company controls nearly 70 percent of the $800 million market.

Brighenti is part of a push to make the secrets of cream cheese available to anyone. Her lab here at the University of Wisconsin-Madison is systematically investigating the spread. The work is funded by federal grants, the dairy industry, and manufacturers who receive prepublication access to research reports and advice. The ultimate goal is to foment innovation, and it couldn’t come at a better time: For the past five years, cream cheese sales have been flat. But manufacturers believe that demand will pick up again if they can develop new varieties, flavors, and uses. The problem is that these attempts often end in failure. The industry needs a cheese whiz.

John Lucey keeps a big poster outside his office at the Wisconsin Center for Dairy Research, just down the hall from Brighenti’s lab bench. (He’s her boss.) The poster is an enlargement of the title page of one of his academic papers, “Predicting Cottage Cheese Cutting Time Using a Light Backscatter Sensor.” Lucey is an associate professor of food science at the university and runs the cream cheese program. Born in Ireland, he came to Wisconsin for a professorship after making his name in yogurt research in Europe. He has studied most cheeses and is convinced that a cream cheese revolution is in the offing.

Most people think there’s nothing wrong with cream cheese. They don’t see what Lucey sees. Cream cheese can be challenging to produce, which accounts for the stream of calls he gets from manufacturers flummoxed by production problems. They complain about cheese that smells like dirty socks, cardboard, or Robitussin. Priority FedEx packages of bad cream cheese arrive regularly at the center.

Scientifically, it’s one of the trickier dairy products. In their natural state, the protein molecules in milk have a negative charge, so they repel one another – that’s what keeps milk liquid. To solidify it (that is, turn it into cheese), this repellency must be overcome. Makers of cheddar and mozzarella usually rely on enzymes in rennet – a substance derived from the stomach lining of young calves – to attack the protein molecules and shear off the section bearing the electrical charge. Cream cheese is the result of a more technical procedure. Acid-secreting bacteria are added to the milk, and the decreasing pH flips the chargeof some of the milk’s proteins. The positively charged molecules attract the negatively charged ones, coagulating the liquid and eventually turning it solid.

The key is getting the cheese to an isoelectric state – the point at which half of its proteins are positive and half negative. Left alone, the bacteria will continue producing acid, giving all the molecules a positive charge and turning the mixture back into a liquid. To stop the acidification, the cheese is heated until the bacteria dies. The cheese maker has to anticipate the isoelectric state and kill the bacteria at the right time. Lucey’s research demonstrates that variations in flavor and texture are largely determined by subtle changes in the timing of this process. Cream cheese also has a higher fat content than most cheeses, and since fat repels water, additives such as guar and carob gums are introduced to bind the water. Without these so-called stabilizers, water tends to separate from the cheese, leaving a hardened gel. Lucey’s experiments have isolated the basic elements – protein, fat, stabilizer, water – and explored the effects of varying each one. His writings are a sort of guidebook to the inner workings of cream cheese, and they are arming Kraft’s competitors with new insights and production techniques.

Franklin Foods, the fifth-largest cream cheese manufacturer in the US, is a good example. In the past few years, the company has combined cream cheese with yogurt, walnuts, maple syrup, smoked salmon, and strawberries. It has also reengineered its spread to grip bagels better. Franklin can’t compete with Kraft on price, but according to company president Jon Gutknecht it can try to change the way consumers think about the product. Gutknecht believes that the cream cheese market is like the ice cream market 25 years ago – only a few flavors dominate. People didn’t know that ice cream could be more exciting than butter pecan. For Gutknecht, the model is obvious: He wants to be the Ben & Jerry’s of cream cheese. “The mission of our company,” he says, “is to reinvent cream cheese.”

To get there, John Ovitt, head of R&D for Franklin, relies on Lucey’s lab. Ovitt makes yearly pilgrimages to Madison and calls on the scientist any time he has a question about how to push the cheese in a new direction. For example, Franklin recently developed a yogurt-infused version, and the moisture content of the yogurt was preventing the cheese from hardening. Ovitt phoned Lucey, who suggested new combinations of stabilizers and a slower acidification of the starter milk, both of which, according to Lucey’s research, would lead to increased water retention. It worked. Franklin patented the new product, debuted it as Hahn’s Heavenly Plain Yogurt Cream Cheese in June 2004, and sold $1.6 million of it last year.

Lucey and his fellow researchers have seen cream cheese at its most unruly. In one instance, a producer’s packages were bulging on the grocery shelf and threatening to explode. The problem occurred in a batch that had been mixed with small pieces of green pepper. By testing the cheese’s chemical composition, Lucey’s team figured out that the pepper was secreting small amounts of acid. Yeast in the cheese was fermenting the acid from the pepper and producing gas. When the product was sealed, the gas built up until, eventually, the container would burst. The solution: Remove the yeast.

With each problem solved, Kraft’s rivals become more competitive. At the moment, Schreiber Foods is in the best position to challenge Kraft’s dominance. Schreiber is the world’s largest privately held cheese company, generating more than $3 billion in annual revenue. It jumped into the cream cheese business only four years ago but moved aggressively, buying manufacturers that supply private-label super-market brands. Schreiber is now the number two producer, controlling an estimated 25 percent of the market. Schreiber also signed on Lucey as a consultant.

As part of his work with Schreiber, Lucey holds confidential briefings with the company and helps it develop products. He offers the same opportunity to Kraft, but he notes that Kraft has less to gain from his help and has shown less interest in his research.

Kraft, in fact, has been slow to invest in experimental products. “Kraft’s criterion for success is a national brand,” explains Phil Tong, a former cream cheese researcher for Kraft and now director of the Dairy Products Technology Center at California Polytechnic State University, San Luis Obispo. “It’s too big a hurdle. It makes them a lot less likely to bring new ideas to market, and, as a result, they’re losing their status as a technology innovator.”

Kraft executives refused to be drawn into a conversation about Lucey’s work or any aspect of cheese science. James Graham, Kraft’s senior director of R&D, would allow only that “cream cheese is a global brand for Kraft, and we work closely with consumers to ensure the highest-quality cream cheese.”

For Lucey, the future of cream cheese will be dictated by upstarts. For instance, Kraft rivals have developed a kimchi flavor for the Asian market and a chipotle salsa variety for the US. It’s a future Lucey can’t wait to taste.

Mercedes Brighenti has spent the past 18 months staring at cream cheese. She has observed its fat globules under microscopes, spun it in centrifuges, melted it, frozen it, and tasted it as if it were a fine wine. A bumper sticker in her office demands EAT CHEESE OR DIE!

One of her favorite research subjects is cheesecake. She likes to place a 2-millimeter slice of cream cheese in a machine that heats it to 170 degrees Fahrenheit. This so-called rheometric test gauges viscosity and serves as a mathematical and scientific substitute for taste-testing a cake. By evaluating various cream cheese formulations, Brighenti is able to determine which types create brittle, firm, grainy, or sticky cakes. It may not win her a Nobel Prize, but it could give the world a better-tasting cheesecake.

Contributing editor Joshua Davis (jd@joshuadavis.net) wrote about robotic cars in issue 14.01.