This fall marks the centenary of William Mitchell. You may not have heard of him, but in his day he was a big cheese. Indeed, he was a big processed cheese, with what’s now Kraft Foods. Mitchell invented Cool Whip and quick-set Jell-O and powdered egg whites for cake mix. He was in the grand tradition of American entrepreneurial energy: Henry Ford made travel faster, Alexander Graham Bell made communication faster, Bill Mitchell made Jell-O even faster. When he died, I wrote an appreciation and noted his one great miscalculation, late in life. He noticed the dahlias growing on his daughter’s land, came up with the idea of roasting their tubers, and created a brown substance with a coffee-like taste that he called Dacopa.
It flopped. The fearless pioneer of convenience foods had failed to foresee that in his final years coffee would become the ultimate inconvenience food. Where once you’d say, “Gimme a cuppa joe, Darlene,” and the waitress would slide it across the counter, now you stand around for 20 minutes as the guy juices the espresso, froths up the milk, lathers on the foam, gives it a shot of caramel flavoring, sprinkles it with cinnamon, adds a slice of pepperoni and a soupçon of Eurasian milfoil, and instead of two bits charges you $5.95.
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