By Donald H. Harrison
SAN DIEGO–This article is about a new line of mandelbread, but as background let me share with you some sage advice I heard while covering an effort by San Diego State University, the local Hansen Institute for World Peace and Israel’s Peres Peace Center to broker an arrangement between Palestinian and Israeli olive growers to create an oil that would blend olives from both sides of the Israeli-Palestinian border.
While this idea was under consideration, Marvin Spira — a man known to many in San Diego as the father of Ann Campbell (and father-in-law of general director Ian Campbell) of the San Diego Opera — counseled the team members based on his many years of marketing food products (among them Lindy’s Cheesecakes) and advising the owners of other food enterprises.
Spira said that while people might be tempted to buy an Israeli-Palestinian blend of olive oil once because of their pro-Middle East peace sentiments, they would not buy the product a second time unless it were a very good olive oil–one that compared favorably in taste and texture with other olive oils on the market.
Associating with a good cause, in other words, may get a customer to try a product, but the product’s own inherent qualities will be key to winning that customer’s allegiance.
I kept Spira’s maxim in mind when I was asked by a representative of Papa Ben’s Kitchen whether I would like to write a story about their new kosher line of mandelbroyt, also known as mandelbread, or almond bread.
Press materials as well as the information on the side of the cookie boxes report that “Papa Ben’s Kitchen is committed to supporting the Zachor Holocaust Remembrance Foundation, an organization that supports Holocaust education, remembrance and tolerance of and for all people.” The Zachor Holocaust Remembrance Foundation, according to the promotional material, was founded by Ben Lesser (“Papa Ben”) as a “non profit organization whose mission is to ensure that the tragedies of the Holocaust will never be forgotten.
“Papa Ben, a Holocaust survivor himself, teaches the importance of Holocaust remembrance and prevention from it ever happening again,” according to the statement. “His mission and experiences will live on through youth educational opportunities supported in part by Papa Ben’s Kitchen.”
Attracted by the stated cause, I was willing to sample the five varieties of mandelbroyt, but I didn’t want to base my evaluation simply on my own taste buds. What I might like someone else might not, and vice versa.
So, on the suggestion of my wife Nancy–who has far more experience with culinary matters than I — we set up two taste tests, one involving four generations of our family, ranging in age from 5 to 93, and the other involving some of our neighbors here in San Diego.
I should say that Nancy loves to bake mandelbread, and boxes it up for Chanukah gifts every year — gifts which our family members and friends anxiously await. I’ve had my hand slapped many times as I have tried to steal a cookie or two from a tin before she can wrap it.
Knowing how partial my family is to Nancy’s mandelbread, we decided to ask the neighbors also to rate Papa Ben’s Cookies to see if there were any significant variance between our family opinion and theirs.
In each case, we cut the mandelbroyt from Papa Ben’s Kitchen into small bite-size pieces, and gave everyone a glass of water, so that between tastes they might clear their palates.
Our tasters sampled each of these cookies: 1) original family recipe; 3) lemon blueberry with poppy seeds; 3) minty dark chocolate; 4) chocolate expresso bean, and 5) spicy chipotle with ginger and dark chocolate.
We asked all of our “tasters” to grade each cookie on a scale of 1 to 5, with 1 being the worst possible score and 5 the best.
So, here were the results, rounded to the nearest hundredth, when the cookies were sampled by a group of six including Nancy and me, her father Sam, our son-in-law Shahar, and two of our grandchildren, Shor, 11, and Sky, 5: Original recipe: 15.5 (average 2.58); lemon blueberry with poppy seeds: 15.5 (average 2.58); minty dark chocolate: 15 (average 2.5); chocolate expresso bean 19 (average 3.167) and spicy chipotle with ginger and dark chocolate: 18.5 (average 3.08).
Interestingly the spicy chipotle with ginger and dark chocolate had the biggest variance– 1’s from Nancy and little Sky, neither of whom like spicy food, and 4’s and a 4.5 from everyone else. It’s one of those cookies, evidently, that you either love or hate.
My 11-year-old grandson noted that as our family evaluated the mandelbread, people had different standards. His great-grandfather was concerned about texture (how the cookie crumbled), his grandmother and brother didn’t like sharp spices, while he, his father and grandfather focused on overall taste, especially in comparison to his grandmother’s own mandelbread.
The following day, seven of our neighbors, all adults, did the same test, unaware how our family scored the cookies. The cumulative scores (and averages) were original recipe 19 (2.71); lemon blueberry with poppy seeds 18.5 (3.08); minty dark chocolate: 27 (3.86); chocolate expresso bean: 23.5 (3.36) and spicy chipotle with ginger and dark chocolate 26.5 (3.79).
When we added the totals of both groups, we found that the ranking in order of popularity was spicy chipotle with ginger and dark chocolate: 45 (3.46); chocolate expresso bean: 42.5 (3.27); minty dark chocolate 42 (3.23); original recipe 34.5 (2.65) and lemon blueberry with poppy seeds 34 (2.62)
Some of the comments I jotted down during the taste tests by the neighbors were “too dry” about the original; and “needs more flavor,” “doesn’t taste lemony,” and “bland” about the lemon blueberry with poppy seeds.
“I didn’t taste the coffee,” said one person about the chocolate expresso bean, prompting two other neighbors to say, in contrast, that they “really did taste it.” The chocolate mint reminded one neighbor of a “Girl Scout cookie,” prompting another to agree, “yes, the thin mint.” A third neighbor declared it had a “good minty taste.”
As for the highest-ranked mandelbroyt variety–the chipotle with ginger and dark chocolate– we heard from one neighbor that “it has an after taste like a ginger snap” and from another that it “has flavor.”
The cookies are packaged in 8-ounce boxes, and each cookie has 80 calories, and 10 carbohydrates.
I asked our neighbors and Nancy how much they would expect to pay for a box of these cookies. The lowest guess was $2.50 and the highest was $5.99.
In fact, the kosher non-dairy cookies are sold over the Papa Ben’s Kitchen website in boxes of 3, 5 or 6 packages for $6.99 per package, plus shipping. A spokesperson said the product is being sold in Los Angeles stores already, and efforts are being made to have them shelved in San Diego as well.
*
Harrison is editor of San Diego Jewish World. He may be contacted at donald.harrison@sdjewishworld.com