Bagel and cream cheese

A bagel and cream cheese (also known as bagel with cream cheese) is a food pairing that consists, in its basic form, of a sliced bagel spread with cream cheese. Bagels with cream cheese are most traditionally served open-faced (although bagel sandwiches are now at least as common) and spread with cream cheese and other toppings. Bagels with cream cheese are common in North American cuisine, especially in American Jewish cuisine and the cuisine of New York City. They became popular among the general population beyond Jewish communities in the 1980s. Bagels served closed as a sandwich also became increasingly popular at that time for their portability, and today the bagel sandwich may be the most common form, outside of the Jewish deli tradition. The basic bagel with cream cheese serves as the base for other items such as the lox as in "lox and schmear" ("smear"), a staple of delicatessens in the New York City and Philadelphia areas and across the U.S. Some non-traditional ingredients take well to bagel sandwiches, such as eggs and breakfast meats, cold cuts and sliced cheese while several traditional Jewish toppings for bagel halves do not work well when sandwiched, including the popular whitefish salad, pickled herring or chopped liver, for the simple mechanical reason that soft toppings easily squirt out the sides when the bagel is bitten.

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