The answer may have more to do with New York than you might think.
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Eric Kim talked to dozens of New Yorkers for this story.
What puts the New York in a New York cheesecake?
Most ardent New Yorkers might say a dreamily smooth and creamy cheesecake layer that’s rich and firm yet somehow light, with some kind of sweet bottom crust. Others might list a set of ingredients: heavy cream, maybe even lemon.
Recipe: Junior’s Cheesecake
But the answer, ultimately, may be cream cheese — specifically, Philadelphia-brand cream cheese.
Like many New Yorkers, cheesecake came from somewhere else, only to undergo a bit of a transformation in the city. As Gil Marks writes in the “Encyclopedia of Jewish Food,” German immigrants brought the käsekuchen (“cheese cake”) to the United States in the mid-19th century, but those early cakes had a cottage cheese base and a pastry crust.
While cheesecake was adapting to its surroundings, cream cheese was on its own journey, though one that never strayed far from the Big Apple. The story goes that, in 1872, William A. Lawrence, a dairyman in Chester, N.Y., started manufacturing what he called “cream cheese,” a creamier version of Neufchâtel, a crumbly French cheese. Hoping to link his creation to the fine dairy being produced out of Philadelphia at the time, he named it after the city, though the brand’s production has remained in New York State to this day.
Simply put, Philadelphia-brand cream cheese has always been a New York creation.
Five decades later — in the 1930s — Jewish bakers and deli owners in the city started substituting cream cheese for cottage cheese, making the cake a lot creamier. For many bakers still, it’s what makes New York cheesecake New York.
But for Bonnie Ponte and Holly Maloney, the sisters who own Eileen’s Special Cheesecake in NoLIta, it’s not just the cream cheese — it’s love (even if the Food and Drug Administration may not consider it an ingredient). Their mother, Eileen Avezzano, first moved to New York from Philadelphia at age 18, following a dream of becoming a Rockette. But, alas, she was too short: “At the time,” Ms. Maloney said, “they didn’t take 5’ 2” Rockettes.”
When her mother died, Ms. Avezzano started baking cheesecakes, selling them at a friend’s Queens deli and eventually opening her shop in 1975. When Ms. Avezzano died in 2018, her daughters picked up where she left off. Today, her cheesecakes are undoubtedly some of the most highly regarded in New York, with tourists flocking to the small shop for a taste.
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