Many uncommon ice cream flavors come and go, but one classic that doesn’t fall out of favor is cookies and cream. Most ice cream shops serve this iconic waffle-cone topper, and you’ll find various store-bought cookies and cream brands in most supermarkets. Because the flavor is so popular, you may think that whoever invented it must be rolling in dough. However, there are actually four individuals (and one corporation) that lay claim to creating cookies and cream — and an ongoing debate rages concerning who thought of concocting the confection first.
The strongest argument comes from the South Dakota State University’s Department of Dairy and Food Science, which has made commercially produced ice cream since 1910. In 1979, SDSU’s dairy plant manager, Shirley Seas, had begun serving ice cream with cookie crumbles on top and decided to experiment with making an ice cream with the cookies incorporated. He told two students, Joe Leedom and Joe Van Treek, that he had an idea for a new flavor and asked them to grab some Oreos from a local market.
The bewildered students nearly cleared the shelves of the beloved cookie, which, at Seas’ request, they crushed into a fruit feeder and mixed into vanilla ice cream. Seas wanted to name his new flavor “Oreo ice cream,” but a lawyer advised him against it due to copyright infringement (per Dairy Herd Management). Instead, Seas went with “Cookies ‘N Cream.” Unfortunately, the university never filed a patent, which then opened the door to other claimants.
Other unconvincing claims of inventing Cookies & Cream
Cookies and Cream is easy to make at home, so it’s amusing that there’s such disagreement over who came up with the simple idea of blending crushed Oreos into vanilla ice cream. In 1973, Steve Herrell opened Steve’s Ice Cream in Somerville, Massachusetts, just outside Boston, and although Herrell never claimed to have created the flavor, his shop was famous for its personalized mix-ins. Oreos, along with brownies and Heath Bars, were popular customer requests.
Another possible “inventor” is Malcolm Stogo, the so-called “Godfather of Ice Cream, who claims that he created the flavor around 1978. Although Stogo is the founder of Ice Cream University, the “Harvard of Ice Cream,” there’s no documented evidence to support his statement. Then, there’s John Harrison, the ice cream flavor developer for Edy’s and Dryer’s who famously test-tasted 20 different flavors daily with his gold-plated spoon. Edy’s and Dryer’s website states that Harrison invented cookies and cream in 1982, but as with Stogo, there’s no real proof.
The last claimant is Blue Bell Creameries, the first company to mass-produce “Cookies ‘N Cream” in 1980. Blue Bell applied for a patent in 1981, but it was invalidated for unstated reasons. Although the company stated in a 2006 interview with The New York Times that it had pioneered (but hadn’t invented) the flavor, Blue Bell’s website now claims it did. SDSU’s story is still the most convincing, but without hard facts, we may never know for sure who invented cookies and cream.
