Jeni’s Ice Cream founder claims ‘New York Times’ stole her recipe; ‘I stand by the fact that the idea is not his’
“I created the recipe to give it away,” Jeni Britton told 614Now, “except to The New York Times.”
Last week, Scott Loitsch, a contributor at New York Times Cooking, posted a video of an ice cream recipe that uses cream cheese as the initial base. Jeni Britton, owner of Jeni’s Ice Cream, promptly commented on the Instagram post, saying, “Dude. This is a *very* slight tweak to my signature game-changing, cream cheese base ice cream recipe that I wrote to make it easy to customize into any flavor you can dream of. I wrote two books about it and received the James Beard Award for [it].”
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Jeni posted her own video on her Instagram, stating it makes her upset to see The New York Times post her recipe “as if they created it.” She said in the post, “Maybe it’s an outsized reaction, but I worked on it for years and took a huge risk publishing it. They turned up their noses at it for years and openly preferred the old custard base…”
Loitsch reached out to Jeni, and she said on Instagram that he told her, “That’s not how information works anymore.” He told her that he read Dana Cree’s recipe in her book, “which was inspired by my recipe and does credit me,” Jeni said. In fact, Loitsch didn’t credit Cree either in his original post.
Jordan Cohen, a spokesperson from The New York Times, told 614Now, “Jeni has been criticizing The Times for days now, despite our outreach and conversation with her and the fact that we followed our standards clearly here. Jeni is welcome to her opinions, but she is wrong on the facts: this is an original recipe designed from a custard base and with particular proportions, ingredients and technique. The reporter who wrote this story has been making ice cream for many years; he started out by helping his mom manage the ice and salt levels in her old-fashioned churning bucket. Now, he creates his own distinct recipes using ratios and formulas, of which this is one. We deeply respect original recipe development and the integrity of Jeni’s work but these recipes are substantially different in numerous ways.“
“I stand by the fact that the idea is not his,” Jeni said on Instagram. “It originated in my kitchen in 2007.”
Jeni told 614Now that she didn’t think this would get much attention. “I’ve gotten dozens of well known chefs and creators telling me they had the same thing happen and the NYT is constantly doing that.”
Ultimately, Jeni said she’s not that mad about it. Her book was a NYT bestseller that “still flies off the shelf every summer 13 years later!” after all. She said she hopes that this actually inspires people to make more ice cream and share it!
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