A diamond anniversary for Cougar Gold
It’s the cheese that made WSU famous. Cougar Gold has been praised by celebrity chefs, carried to the top of Mount Everest, and gifted to foreign dignitaries. At 75 years old, it’s more popular today than it’s ever been.
WSU’s outstanding, student-made aged cheddar cheese marks its diamond anniversary in 2023. The very first batch was sold by Washington State College in 1948, the same year that Ferdinand’s ice cream bar opened in Troy Hall.
Noted dairy scientist Norman S. Golding, an English immigrant by way of Canada, is the namesake and in many ways the father of Cougar Gold and its signature yellow can.
“Dr. Golding was the Thomas A. Edison of WSU,” wrote Jerry D. Clarke, a Golding student and 1942 graduate who worked with the professor on the creation of the famous cheese, in a letter to the college. “He was always inventing something.”
“He was strictly a lab man, and everything had to be exact,” remembered Leonard Hale, a student and creamery operator in the late 1940s and early ‘50s, in a letter to the Creamery.
You can’t make cheese without milk, and back then most of the milk from the college dairy went to the dining halls. During breaks, holidays, and big away-game weekends, milk would be sold at a loss to nearby farms or Spokane market, but in the 1940s, creamery staff decided to make cheese.
“At the termination of summer school, we had around five weeks to process cheese every day,” Hale, a successful dairy professional, recalled in 1981.
In the era before plastic, cheeses were coated in wax, which could and did crack, spoiling the product. Metal cans weren’t a great option either—carbon dioxide buildup could burst cans. In the 1940s, Golding used funding from the U.S. government and the American Can Company to solve the exploding-can problem.
Golding created something unique with Cougar Gold. A secondary culture gives it a special flavor, and the cheese has a sweeter profile than other cheddars, as well as a fullness of flavor from its yearlong aging process.
“In those early days, the ‘Cougar Gold’ didn’t have its present popularity,” Hale wrote. “I as a ‘cheese lover’ was fascinated with it, and I took it home at every opportunity.”
Full production of the cheese didn’t really start until 1975, when word and popularity of Cougar Gold began to take off. The 1992 move to the Food Quality Building doubled capacity.
Since 1948, more than 9 million cans of Cougar Gold have delighted the world. Today, nearly 260,000 cans are made annually, supporting research and student work experience at WSU.
It remains far and away the WSU Creamery’s most popular flavor, with new fans discovering it every year. On its diamond anniversary, the Cougar creation is still as good as gold.
The WSU Creamery held a 75th birthday party for Cougar Gold on Sept. 23, 2023, the day of the WSU-Oregon State football game. The date reflects the earliest discovered receipt of a Cougar Gold sale: Sept. 24, 1948.