Natural cheese is used to flavor many prepared foods, for example, pizza, macaroni and cheese, cheese sauces, cheese dips and cheese balls. The natural cheese used for preparing such cheese-flavored foods is subject to spoilage and must be refrigerated. Even with refrigeration, the cheese must be carefully handled in order to prevent unwanted microbe growth, particularly, mold growth. For example, in home use, natural cheese is quite susceptible to mold growth once the cheese package has been opened. Even without opening the package and under proper refrigeration, conventional packaging for home-size packages are susceptible to mold growth.
Accordingly, natural cheeses must be obtained shortly before the home use in preparing cheese-flavored foods. This is not only inconvenient for the householder, but has substantially prevented pre-assembled ingredient packages for preparing cheese-flavored foods, with the exceptions where the package is either stored under frozen conditions, which is expensive and most inconvenient, or the package uses a relatively-dry or sterilized cheese composition, which often adversely affects the acceptability of the product. For example, pre-packaged ingredients for preparing pizza in the home include relatively-dry and hard Italian-type cheeses as the cheese ingredient. Such cheeses are not true pizza cheeses and they have significantly restricted the acceptability of these pre-packaged pizza ingredients.
Efforts to stabilize natural cheeses against spoilage by methods other than freezing have not met with substantial commercial success. Thus, canning, irradiating, etc., have not produced acceptable results. Also, attempts to stabilize natural cheeses against microbial growth with microbiocides have resulted in deteriorated taste, texture and cooking properties of the cheeses and have not produced satisfactory commercial results.
A substantial advance in the art is provided by the invention disclosed and claimed in the U.S. Pat. No. 3,917,854, identified above and a subsequent improvement thereon, as disclosed in U.S. Pat. No. 3,941,891, and entitled "SYNERGISTIC COMBINATION CHEESE EXTENDER" . Those disclosures are incorporated herein by reference and the disclosures are relied upon. The invention in U.S. Pat. No. 3,917,854 provides a cheese-substitute composition which is a congealed mixture of magnesium and/or potassium neutralized casein, a fat having a melting point of 130.degree. F. or less, and water. This congealed mixture mimics the texture and cooking properties of natural cheese and, which determinable selections of the ratios of the neutralized casein, water and fat, the properties of mozzarella cheese may be mimicked. Since the congealed composition is essentially bland in flavor and will not interfere with the normal taste of the pizza cheese or pizza sauce, the congealed composition may be substituted for a part of the mozzarella cheese used in producing a pizza. Further, if the congealed mixture is flavored, e.g., with a synthetic cheese flavor, then the congealed mixture may be used totally to replace mozzarella cheese in a pizza.
That composition can be provided in a dried form, e.g., spray-dried form, and can be reconstituted with water to form the congealed cheese-like mixture. It was recognized that the dry, but reconstitutable, form was a substantial improvement in the art since the dry form is storage-stable for long periods of time, even without particular storage conditions, other than normal home environments. However, the care and equipment associated with reconstitution of the dry, storage stable-mixture was beyond that which would normally be acceptable for home use.
It would, however, be desirable to provide a cheese extender or cheese substitute of that nature which can be essentially "instantly" reconsititued into the congealed mixture. This would provide a shelf-stable form of cheese-substitute for storage and home use and such cheese-substitute could be included in packaged pre-assembled ingredients for cheese-flavored foods, without the necessity of chemical stabilizing agents, or freezing, or the like.