On the Chef Jeff Cookie Trail

Courtesy of slgckgc

When I first found out the Chef Jeff cookie was originally made by a woman, I had a million questions floating in my head about a cookie that I had never thought twice about. The Chef Jeff cookie was actually named after a Mount Holyoke chef? And this man stole the recipe from a female chef? Is there any way to actually prove it? If so, what can be done? Mount Holyoke, the first women’s college in the United States, has a strong history of rewarding women in leadership positions and encouraging women’s recognition in the workplace.

As a MHC student, I enjoy sitting at our campus center, Blanchard, where a small café called Uncommon Grounds sells  Chef Jeff cookies. The cookies come in a variety of flavors from Chocolate Chunk and Chocolate Chip to Heath Bars and Oatmeal Raisin. The Chef Jeff cookies have a crispy crust that tastes almost burnt at the edges.  Once you bite through the exterior, the thick dough inside is soft and buttery. For the Chocolate Chunk cookie, the chocolate chips are slightly melted and gooey so the taste lingers on your tongue for a little while.

A few days ago, I was stirring the crushed ice in my chocolate milkshake while my friend was contemplating buying a cookie. Another friend pointed out that the cookie was actually made by a woman called Nancy who still works in one of the dining halls. She heard this information from Dale Hennessey, the head of Dining Services, but did not know anything else about the matter. For something that is popular on campus, I was surprised to learn that there was a hidden story behind it.

At Mount Holyoke, the students take pride in long-lasting traditions, icons and cutesy nicknames. The Chef Jeff cookie encompasses all three of those qualities. Even Lynn Pasquerella, the president of the college, talked about Chef Jeff cookies in her 2013 Convocation Speech as a prized part of the Mount Holyoke experience. Although the cookie is a popular comfort food during exams, it is also used by on-campus organizations as added incentive to lure other students to listen or join their group. And it works. Mount Holyoke students adore the cookie.

It seems that everybody on campus had a Chef Jeff story so I decided to hear Nancy Keenan’s. Nancy is a slightly frail woman in her mid-fifties who wears round glasses and an over-sized, white chef’s uniform. She has been working at Mount Holyoke for over twenty years. Nancy was working the lunch shift in the Prospect Residence Hall when I asked for her. She approached me with uncertainty and was shocked that I knew she was the creator of the Chef Jeff cookie. Nancy grew up in the neighboring town of Holyoke with three older sisters in an ordinary working class family. Since she was eight years old, she loved to bake.  In her early thirties, she was looking for work that would allow her to spend time with her children and put dinner on the table. The advantages of working at Mount Holyoke College appealed to her since it was down the street from where she lived and her schedule would match her two daughters’ holidays.

From the mid to late 90s, when all residence halls dining rooms, chefs got to know a lot of the students. Nancy worked alongside student workers at the residence hall called 1837 Residence Hall. She developed a close relationship with the students. Thus,  she’d set out a culinary showcase of what she called, “Toll House Cookies” although it wasn’t compulsory. “Toll House Cookies” is the name Nestle gave to the chocolate chip cookie in the 1930s.

While Nancy was working at 1837 Residence Hall, Jeff Sadowski was the chief manager at the same place. Jeff, an average-looking guy of standard height and medium build, sported a French beard. Born, brought up and still living in Northampton, his introduction to culinary was during his first job at high school as a busboy. From there, he moved up, getting more involved in the kitchen, which led to a degree in culinary arts from Johnson and Wales College in Rhode Island. After he got married and had two children, like Nancy, he got a job at Mount Holyoke for the child-friendly hours. Throughout my interview with him, he kept repeating how important the students were to him and how it kept him passionate about his job.

“I really cared for the students. I really, really adored them and I like to think it was reciprocal,” says Jeff.

In fact, his reputation till this day is quite a charismatic one. Dale Hennessey talks about his personable nature and how the students always loved him. That is how his nickname, Chef Jeff, came about. Jeff says that he invented the Chef Jeff cookie recipe when he moved from 1837 Residence Hall to Blanchard around 1996-97. He started by baking a small batch everyday and eventually, the cookie’s popularity took off. The sales of this soft yet chunky cookie rose so quickly that they had to hire a bakery to make tubs and tubs of dough especially for the Chef Jeff cookie. Jeff maintains that this cookie was never made in 1837 Residence Hall before he moved to Blanchard to become café manager. Nancy doesn’t mind that he took the  recipe but acknowledges that he obviously got the idea when he was working with her in 1837 Residence Hall. She also said that Jeff made a variety of flavors by using the essentials of her recipe, such as the textural qualities created by the dough for the foundation.

“I don’t know what happened once he went over to Blanch[ard]. He just took it and took the recipe,” says Nancy.

Even though Jeff insists that he first conceived of the unique recipe while working at Blanchard, Dale Hennessey upholds her argument that the recipe is not his alone. Dale, who has tried to keep Nancy’s identity a secret from me, calls the inception of the Chef Jeff cookie “a collaboration” since Jeff’s contributions were his name, and the sale and rising popularity of the cookies at Blanchard and the alterations he made to Nancy’s version of the cookie. In order to understand more about ethics in the restaurant industry, I reached out to Adam Platt, a culinary writer for New York Magazine.

“In the restaurant/cooking world, collaboration is the name of the game,” says Platt. “Recipes are constantly being borrowed, or half borrowed, or downright stolen, and most of them show up in the public domain, sooner or later, published in cook books.”

The intellectual property of recipes is a tricky subject in the food industry. Recently, a particular dessert called the Cronut (half croissant, half donut) has become the latest craze in New York. The lines of people for this savory hybrid snake around street corners can be hours long. A pastry chef, Dominique Ansel, created the Cronut and copyrighted the name. But everyone, from small patisseries to Dunkin Donuts, is copying the recipe. Dunkin Donuts has named their rendition of the Cronut “New York Pie Donut.” Still, there is nothing Ansel can do since only the name has been copyrighted, not the recipe.

Jeff and Nancy’s cookie controversy are mere crumbs next to Ansel’s giant, contentious Cronut. Another factor that further complicates this issue is that neither Nancy nor Jeff got paid for the Chef Jeff cookies. Since the cookie’s name and recipe are technically the property of Mount Holyoke College, neither chef can take any sort of ownership of the cookie. Besides, it is unlikely that they’d have the resources or interest in the extensive process of copyrighting.

One of the questions that arose, but never got answered, is why Dining Services is so keen on keeping Nancy’s identity, as the inventor of the Chef Jeff cookie, a secret? Was it because Dinning Services  believed that it was Nancy’s recipe alone? Or maybe she quite simply didn’t want to give any excuse for controversy in the college. Either way, Mount Holyoke student Ryan Baltuskonis says, “Once again, the male gets all the freaking glory.”