The Jewish History of America's Most Famous Ice Cream

You can thank them for cookie dough, chunky monkey, and peanut butter ice cream.

*The name “Häagen-Dazs” leads many to assume it to be Nordic in origin. Surprise — this internationally renowned ice cream company that sees over $2 billion in sales annually was actually the brainchild of Polish Jew Reuben Mattus.

Mattus was convinced he could deliver even higher quality ice cream to his customers, and engaged in a thorough self-education on the science and culinary methodology required to create the richest, most superior frozen confections. Mattus’ real stroke of genius, however, was his recognition that his new ultra-premium ice cream needed a certain cosmopolitan cache to make it appeal to his target audience: sophisticated, moneyed Americans. Thus, he decided to give it a “foreign-sounding” name, and specifically a Danish(ish) one to pay tribute to the country’s effort to save Jews during WWII.

Remarkably, around the same time, another Jew on the other side of the country was also launching his own ice cream experiment. Canadian Irv Robbins was self-taught, first gaining skills working in his father’s store and then teaching himself more advanced techniques while crafting ice cream as a lieutenant in the U.S. Navy during the Second World War. In 1945, Robbins opened the Snowbird Ice Cream parlor, in part with funds from his bar mitzvah (how’s that for foresight?) in Glendale, California and quickly won rave reviews for the wide variety of flavors. Shortly thereafter, Robbins’ brother-in-law Bert Baskin opened his own shop, and in 1948, the fraternal pair established a joint establishment and soon-to-be company, Baskin-Robbins.

They came full circle when, almost fifty years later, Baskin-Robbins merged with Dunkin’ Donuts (founded by Jewish entrepreneur William Rosenberg).' >

https://www.myjewishlearning.com/the-nosher/the-jewish-history-of-americas-most-famous-ice-cream/?

((Glad I'm upholding the tribe, spending as much on haagen and dunkin as I do!))