Finding Thorkild Knudsen

Breakstone's is owned by Kraft.  But does that mean it's any less unique?  Kraft could still be using the old Breakstone's recipes and their original cultures.  It could still be getting milk from the same farms and aging their products in the same ways.  Just because Kraft's distribution network is more efficient doesn't mean the product is more generic.

Does it?

There's at least one reason to think it does.  Kraft proudly proclaims it on their website:

If you live in the eastern, southeastern and midwestern United States, you know us by the Breakstone's name. If you live in the western United States, we're known as Knudsen

In the east, they sell Breakstone's.  In the west, Knudsen.

Are they the same?



Or are they just packaged the same?

They have exactly the same nutrition information for, say, their 4% cottage cheese.  Friendship's 4% cottage cheese has similar information, but different.

But Knudsen's 2% small curd cottage cheese lists its ingredients:  cultured pasteurized grade A nonfat milk, milk and cream, modified food starch, salt, calcium carbonate, acetic acid, guar gum, vitamin A palmitate, vitamin D3.  My package of Breakstone's includes whey and "natural flavor", leaves out acetic acid, and substitutes calcium phosphate for calcium carbonate.

Now, it could be that the recipe for cottage cheese can vary from time to time.  When a manufacturer is able to get hold of one ingredient for a lower cost than another, recipes may change.  And since Breakstone's isn't sold out west, it could be that the Knudsen recipe has to be different because of different state-mandated food standards in California and New York

Complicating things immensely is the fact that there are certain Knudsen dairy products that aren't even owned by Kraft.

It's like a prop from a John Waters Movie.

Knudsen isn't just a name someone came up with out of thin air.  It was founded in 1919 in Los Angeles by Thorkild (Tom) and Carl Knudsen.  Tom's main innovation was finding a way to use skim milk to make cottage cheese.  Back then, skim milk was a waste product.  Nobody would drink it for fear, I can only imagine, that it would turn them communist.  Knudsen had a long and colorful history as a California brand.  Check out this Knudsen cookbook from 1958.

In 1983, Knudsen was bought by Winn Enterprises and combined with Foremost.  By 1986, they were going bankrupt because, apparently real estate tycoons don't know how to distribute milk more efficiently than milk distributors.

Kraft bought out about half the company's operations in September 1986.  Kraft seems to have no desire to sell plain milk.  It prefers the "value added" products.

Since that time, Knudsen and Breakstone's product lines have grown closer together.  But there are some differences.  Kraft Knudsen sells this:

What is this?  Seriously, what is this?

Breakstone's doesn't sell anything like "Hampshire" sour cream.  I can't even find a definition of Hampshire sour cream.  Yet, Breakstone's sour cream has exactly the same ingredients and nutrition information as Knudsen Hampshire sour cream.

To what extent are these the same products?  Does that mean that Thorkild Knudsen's legacy is gone?  And what does it say about the equally historic East Coast legacy of Breakstone's?

Man, corporations are weird.