One company’s obsessive, decade-long quest to make American cheese that’s actually cheese

Bad, yet still pretty good, American cheese refuses to expire—and not just because of all the preservatives. American cheese—pasteurized, processed, and super-melty—is, for better or worse, arguably the 20th century’s most iconic food product. And yes, “pasteurized, processed cheese food” is what federal regulators call it instead of “cheese.” It is a paradox embraced shamelessly by some of the most elite food names around. From Salt Fat Acid Heat author Samin Nosrat (“I have a secret love of American cheese, the yellow kind that has a plasticky quality when it melts”), to J. Kenji López-Alt, whose The Food Lab dedicates a chapter to the science of melting cheese (“damn right it’s gonna be American”), to even the, er, killer high-end chef in The Menu, played by Ralph Fiennes (“American cheese is the best cheese for a cheeseburger, because it melts without splitting”), the culinary world has simply never found a substitute. What makes American cheese “American”—its uniformity, gooey tex