A bagel with cream cheese is common in American cuisine and the cuisine of New York City and Philadelphia. In the United States, the bagel and cream cheese is often eaten for breakfast, and when paired with smoked salmon, it is sometimes served for brunch. In New York City and Philadelphia circa 1900, a popular combination consisted of a bagel topped with lox, cream cheese, capers, tomato, and red onion. The combination of a bagel with cream cheese has been promoted to American consumers in the past by American food manufacturers and publishers. In the early 1950s, Kraft Foods launched an "aggressive advertising campaign" that depicted Philadelphia-brand cream cheese with bagels. In 1977, Better Homes and Family Circle magazines published a bagel and cream cheese recipe booklet that was distributed in the magazines and also placed in supermarket dairy cases.
In American Jewish cuisine, a bagel and cream cheese is sometimes called a "whole schmear" or "whole schmeer", indicating a bagel with cream cheese. A "slab" is a bagel served with a slab of cream cheese atop it. A "lox and a schmear" refers to a bagel with cream cheese and lox or smoked salmon. Tomato, red onion, capers and chopped hard-boiled egg are additional ingredients that are sometimes used on the lox and schmear. All of these terms are used at some delicatessens in New York City and Philadelphia, particularly at Jewish delicatessens and older, more traditional delicatessens. The lox and schmear likely originated in New York City around the time of the turn of the 20th century, when street vendors in the city sold salt-cured belly lox from pushcarts. A high amount of salt in the fish necessitated the addition of bread and cheese to reduce the lox's saltiness. It was reported by U.S. newspapers in the early 1940s that bagels and lox were sold by delicatessens in New York City as a "Sunday morning treat", and in the early 1950s, bagels and cream cheese combination were very popular in the United States, having permeated American culture. The bagel and smoked fish combination appeared in Philadelphia almost at the same time as in New York City, and remains a celebrated item in the Jewish delis of Philadelphia. The cultural ascendancy of New York City encouraged the popular belief that bagels were introduced by and thrived only in the Polish immigrant community of that city, when naturally the same population of Poles created a large community in Northeast Philadelphia. However, seafood distributors of New York City remain the source for most of Philadelphia's lox and nova.
Mass production
Both bagels and cream cheese are mass-produced foods in the United States. Additionally, in January 2003, Kraft Foods began purveying a mass-produced convenience food product named Philadelphia To Go Bagel & Cream Cheese, which consisted of a combined package of two bagels and cream cheese.
In popular culture
Bagels and cream cheese were provided to theater patrons by the cast of Bagels and Yox, a 1951 American-Yiddish Broadwayrevue, during the intermission period of the show. The revue ran at the Holiday Theatre in New York City from September 1951 to February 1952. A 1951 review of Bagels and Yox published in Time magazine helped to popularize bagels to American consumers throughout the country. "Bagel and Lox" is a humorous song about the virtues of the bagel, lox, and cream cheese sandwich. It was written by Sid Tepper and Roy C. Bennett. It has been recorded by several different artists, including Eddie "Rochester" Anderson and, more recently, Rob Schneider, Joan Jaffe, and Oleg Frish. The lyrics to the chorus are:
Bagel and lox with the cheese in the middle, Bagel and lox let it toast on the griddle, Bagel and lox with the cheese in the middle, And a slice of onion on the side.
