Edwin Traisman, Helped Create Iconic Foods, 91
DGH
Edwin Traisman, 91, Dies; Helped Create Iconic Foods
By DENNIS HEVESI [New York Times]
Edwin Traisman, a food scientist who helped standardize McDonald's
French fries and develop Cheez Whiz for Kraft Foods, as well as
researching the risks of E. coli bacteria, died Tuesday [June 5, 2007]
in Madison, Wiscosin. He was 91 and lived in Monona, Wisconsin.
The cause was heart disease, his daughter Jenny Denise Traisman-
Waddell said.
Lisa McComb, a spokeswoman for McDonald's, said of Mr. Traisman
yesterday, "He truly made a significant contribution to McDonald's
fries."
Mr. Traisman was manager of dairy research for Kraft in 1957 when he
noticed long lines at a new drive-in restaurant called McDonald's in
Des Plaines, Ill. Within a year, he left his job at Kraft and opened
the first of four McDonald's restaurants that he would eventually own,
three in Madison and one in Monona.
Soon after, Mr. Traisman's research expertise came to the attention of
Ray Kroc, the president of the McDonald's chain, which had 200
restaurants.
Mr. Kroc had a problem. All of McDonald's French fries were being made
from fresh potatoes shipped from 175 farms and sliced and cooked at
each restaurant.
"Ray thought the best potatoes came from Idaho," Ms. McComb said. "But
their crop season left several months when there weren't enough fresh
potatoes."
Mr. Traisman and another food scientist, Ken Strong, were asked by Mr.
Kroc to find a way to supply all the restaurants with peeled and cut
potatoes that would hold their taste, color and crispness no matter
the season. The solution was to quick fry the slices for up to a
minute at 300 degrees to remove some of the moisture and then freeze
them.
By 1972, frozen fries were being shipped to the 2,272 McDonald's
restaurants. Today, the company supplies frozen fries to 31,000
restaurants worldwide.
While he was at Kraft, from 1949 to 1957, Mr. Traisman led the team
that combined cheese, emulsifiers and other ingredients into the
bright yellow sauce called Cheez Whiz, a topping for corn chips,
cheese steaks and hot dogs. It was introduced in 1953.
Mr. Traisman was born on November 25, 1915, in Chicago [Illinois], a
son of Latvian immigrants. The only one of six siblings to graduate
from high school, he went on to earn a bachelor's in chemistry at the
University of Illinois in 1936.
Besides his daughter Jenny, of McFarland, Wis., survivors include his
wife, Dorothy; three other daughters, Barbara of San Francisco
[California], Lisa of Monona, and Claudia Ward of Santa Rosa, Calif.;
a son, Steven, of San Francisco; seven grandchildren; and two great-
grandchildren.
In 1975, Mr. Traisman returned to research as the senior program
manager at the Food Research Institute of the University of Wisconsin-
Madison. The director of the institute, Michael W. Pariza, said
yesterday that some of the projects Mr. Traisman worked on "affect
everybody in the country."
"When it became evident in the late '80s that hemorrhagic E. coli was
a serious health problem," Dr. Pariza said, "Ed initiated research on
how to control it."
One strain of the common intestinal bacterium E. coli can cause
bleeding in the colon and other internal disorders. It sometimes
contaminates ground beef. Research by Mr. Traisman's team in 1987
found that ground meat had to be thoroughly cooked at temperatures
high enough to kill the bacteria to avoid potential risks.
"Other people certainly have confirmed it," Dr. Pariza said, "but this
was the earliest research on it."
http://www.nytimes.com/2007/06/09/us/09traisman.html?ref=obituaries