How I Came to Love the Dusty Powdered Dishwasher Detergent of My Childhood
Wirecutter's resident detergent expert, Andrea Barnes, snapped this look at Cascade detergents through the decades while reporting at Procter & Gamble. Andrea Barnes/NYT Wirecutter
Cascade was developed in 1955 as a spin-off of Tide laundry detergent, which was then marketed as multiuse. I spoke with Morgan Eberhard, a senior scientist at Procter & Gamble, the company that makes Cascade, to confirm some details about Cascade's history.
'Prior to the launch of Cascade, Tide boxes said 'cleaner clothes, sparkling dishes' on them,' Eberhard told me in a video interview. 'We launched Cascade because we saw a need to differentiate formulations for different jobs, instead of having one that was pretty good at all of it. Tide powder didn't leave dishes shiny.'
The Cascade powder I remember was a green box with an outline of a sparkling glass on the front. I also found a 1988 lemon version for sale on eBay for $32.99, complete with a ShopRite price tag of $2.49.
The current version of Cascade powder was reformulated in 2019 to include Dawn, a detergent known for its excellent ability to cut grease. Dawn was added to specifically help clean the increasing amount of plastic, such as to-go containers and kids' dishes, that people were washing. Plastic tends to hold onto grease more effectively than glass or ceramic, said Eberhard, so the reformulation helped address that. (For the record, experts don't recommend that you reuse or machine-wash single-use plastic for food purposes, due to the potential for microplastic exposure.)
The blue granules throughout the Cascade powder are 'protease, a protein-busting enzyme that proved especially effective on meat sauce, egg yolk, and burnt milk in our testing,' according to our guide. My house is full of pasta enthusiasts who eat carbonara monthly. The sticky, eggy, cheesy remnants were a challenge for our previous big-box-brand pods. Now Cascade powder slips it off our Fiestaware, no problem.
Some people online have complained about the smell of the new Cascade formulation, but I am very scent-averse, and its light citrus notes don't overwhelm me or transfer to our silicone tools, as other detergent scents have in the past.
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