Non-Dairy Whipped Topping? That was Rich.

Non-Dairy Whipped Topping?  That was Rich.

Robert Rich, inventor of frozen non-dairy topping, died on February 15th, aged 92

As sales presentations go, the one Robert Rich gave in Long Island, New York, in the summer of 1945 was one of the more nerve-wracking. Eighteen sales reps faced him. Mr Rich had brought along some samples of his new invention, a concoction of soy-oil shortening, isolated soya protein, corn syrup and water, in the hopes of persuading them that this could taste as yummy, and whip as lightly, as heavy cream. To keep them from the heat, on the long train journey from his home in Buffalo, he had wrapped the samples stoutly in dry ice and newspaper. Now they hit the table with a thud, frozen solid.

Mr Rich kept talking. As the words flowed, he took a knife surreptitiously to the chunks of “cream”, trying to soften them. When words ran out, he turned the hand-beater on them; and they whipped like a dream. White, unctuous, splendid stuff rose up in mounds, as in the picture above, where Mr Rich holds the bowl.

Few revolutions have been made with a hand-beater. But Mr Rich’s was one. Before he began to experiment with flaking and precipitating soyabeans, whipped cream was a hit-or-miss affair. It would not keep, especially in the humid South. Nor would it freeze. Over-beating produced a buttery mess, and ambitious decorations sank gradually into gloop. To top it all, in wartime, heavy whipping cream was a banned substance. All available milk was needed fresh for the people, or dried and condensed for the troops. To dream of an éclair or a cream puff, even of a modest dollop nestling a cherry or topping off a sundae, was close to a traitorous act.

Mr Rich, however, dreamed often of whipped cream. His boyhood had been spent in and out of his father’s ice-cream plant, and in 1935 he started such a plant himself, the Wilber Farms Dairy in Buffalo. He should have been fat, but he was a fine and fit sportsman, captain of both football and wrestling at university. Possibly he might have gone into sports professionally. But Mr Rich became fascinated with the process by which, through a series of vats and pipes and settling beds, the humble and ubiquitous soyabean could be made to do the work of a cow.

 

Read the rest of the obituary at the Economist

 

clock  Posted Fri Feb 24th, 2006

About cPaul

Father: "He never amounted to anything". Mother: "Who the hell does he think he is"? Former Teacher: "Smart as a bag of hammers". Former Boss: "Condescending". Brother: "Mom loves me more".
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