Vanilla

What is it?

Häagen-Dazs was invented in the Bronx in 1960. Reuben Mattus made the name up to sound Danish, put an outline map of Denmark on the early cartons, and sold the result as an import that had never left New York. The vanilla is where the density shows. Ice cream is allowed a great deal of air, and high-overrun tubs use it, since whipping in more makes a batch of mix stretch further and scoop softer straight from the freezer. Häagen-Dazs doesn't. That's why a pint weighs what it does and why the tub's smaller than a British freezer expects. That changes how it eats. A dense ice cream melts slowly and lets its flavour go late, so a vanilla built this way tastes different from a soft scoop one before the vanilla itself comes into it.