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Eating ice cream with a gold spoon at 7:30 a.m. sounds like an indulgence reserved for the most decadent of mornings. For John Harrison, it was his job, one that he did early in the morning because that’s when his taste buds were freshest and with a gold-plated spoon because wood and silver might alter the flavor.
Harrison was Dreyer’s Official Taste Tester from 1980 to 2010, working his way through an average of sixty samples a day. “Does this taste good?” was only the beginning. Harrison approached ice cream with the precision of a scientist, judging each spoonful for flavor balance, temperature, aroma, ingredient distribution, and consistency. He didn’t eat the ice cream, but used his “swirl, smack, spit” method followed by a palate cleanse of crackers and lukewarm water.
Harrison’s qualifications for the job were more than just a sweet tooth. Harrison, as he put it, “fell into a bath of ice cream.” His father and uncle owned ice cream factories and his grandfather ran the ice cream parlor Harriosn’s great-grandfather opened in 1880. Harrison’s years in the family business “eating his way through the summer months” trained his pallet. Everyone has the same 9,000 taste buds, he liked to say. His were simply better refined.
They were much better protected, too. Harrison didn’t consume alcohol, caffeine, garlic, onions, or spicy foods to protect the dignity of his buds. In 1991, Dreyer’s and Harrison decided to put their money where their mouth was–quite literally–and take out a $1 million insurance policy on Harrison’s taste buds.
It was clear to everyone that each of his 9,000 taste buds were worth protecting. Harrison could immediately taste the difference between 12% and 11.5% butterfat in a product and he reportedly rejected over 100,00 gallons of ice cream that didn’t meet his standards. He used his skills to help Dreyer’s invent more than one-hundred unique flavors including, he claims, Cookies n’ Cream.
John Harrison left behind a legacy as one of the best to ever wield the golden spoon in a job that sounds too good to be real. Perhaps in retirement he can enjoy a scoop of Dreyer’s without having to spit it out.
