Häagen-Dazs
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Häagen-Dazs is an American brand of ice cream, established by Reuben and Rose Mattus in The Bronx, New York in 1961. It has also become a specialty ice cream chain store which sells its own brand of ice cream throughout the eastern United States. Häagen-Dazs produces ice cream, ice cream bars, sorbet, and frozen yogurt.
The ice cream comes in many different flavors and is a so-called "super-premium" brand, meaning it is quite dense (very little air is mixed in during manufacture and no emulsifiers such as guar gum are used), and has a high butterfat content. It is sold both in grocery stores and in dedicated retail outlets serving ice cream cones, sundaes, and so on.
A majority of the permanent flavors offered by the company include chocolate in one form or another, though there are vanilla-based blends as well. Three to four times a year a seasonal limited edition flavor is introduced.
Häagen-Dazs was sold to The Pillsbury Company, now owned by General Mills, in 1983. In the USA and Canada, the brand is used under license by Nestlé.
In the 1980s, Häagen-Dazs faced competition from Frusen Glädjé, another brand of premium American ice cream with a Scandinavian-style name.
Rose Mattus, who launched Häagen-Dazs ice cream with her husband, died on November 30, 2006. She was 90 years old.
Contents |
[edit] List of flavors
[edit] Permanent
- Almond hazelnut swirl
- Baileys® Irish cream
- Banana split
- Belgian Chocolate
- Black raspberry chip
- Black walnut
- Butter pecan
- Caramel cone explosion
- Cherry vanilla
- Chocolate
- Chocolate chip cookie dough
- Chocolate chocolate chip
- Chocolate peanut butter
- Cinnamon dulce de leche
- Coffee
- Cookies & cream
- Crème brulée
- Dulce de leche
- English toffee
- Lychee
- Macadamia brittle
- Mango
- Mayan chocolate
- Mint chip
- Mocha almond fudge
- Mocha chip
- Peaches & cream
- Pineapple coconut
- Pistachio
- Prailine's and Cream
- Rocky road
- Rum raisin
- Rockmelon
- Sticky toffee pudding (Previously 2006 limited-edition flavor)
- Strawberry
- Strawberry cheesecake
- Triple chocolate
- Vanilla
- Vanilla bean
- Vanilla chocolate chip
- Vanilla fudge
- Vanilla fudge brownie
- Vanilla swiss almond
- White chocolate raspberry truffle
- Green Tea (China, Japan, South Korea, Hong Kong, Taiwan, Thailand and Singapore only)
[edit] Limited-edition
- German chocolate cake (2006 and 2007)
- Belgian chocolate (2007)
- Strawberry shortcake (2007)
[edit] Retired
- Carob (c. 1983)
- Honey Vanilla (c. 1985)
[edit] Name
Contrary to common belief, the name is not Scandinavian ; it is simply two made-up words meant to look Scandinavian to American eyes. This is known in the marketing industry as foreign branding (and also similar to the heavy metal umlaut). Mattus included an outline of Denmark on early labels to reinforce the Scandinavian theme—Ironically, although Häagen-Dazs operates in 54 countries around the world, none of the company's 700 stores are in any Scandinavian country.
The playful spelling devices in the name invoke the spelling systems used in several European countries. "ä" (an 'a' with an Umlaut) is used in the spelling of the German, Finnish, Slovak and Swedish languages, doubled vowel letters spell long vowels in Finnish, Dutch, and occasionally German; and zs corresponds to /ʒ/ (as in vision) in Hungarian. None of these spelling conventions is used in pronouncing the name of the American product, which has a short a, hard g, and a final s sound. The closest real name to the fake Häagen is the Danish/Norwegian Hagen (surname). Dazs is a possible word in Hungarian due to the "zs" grapheme, but does not resemble any real name.
A further step in branding is the renaming of the Teatro Calderón in Madrid, Spain to Teätro Häagen-Dazs Calderón[1]. There is no ä in Spanish words.
[edit] References
- ^ The theater page. Retrieved on 13 February 2007
