Ice Cream $cientist Dr. Maya Warren Gives Us the Scoop I: The Work

Maya Warren, PhD is a food chemist who specializes in ice cream. She is currently the Senior Director of International R&D at Cold Stone Creamery. Dr. Warren also serves it up as their Taste Master, a role that allows her to invent new flavors a… — Maya Warren, PhD is a food chemist who specializes in ice cream. She is currently the Senior Director of International R&D at Cold Stone Creamery. Dr. Warren also serves it up as their Taste Master, a role that allows her to invent new flavors and put her fantabulous twist on others. (Image: Dr. Maya Warren)

“The life I wanted to live… travel and ice cream”

— Dr. Warren

Summer, Winter, Spring or Fall… we love our ice cream. We love it so much that we find dairy alternatives to keep up the 20+ liters of it that we eat every year. But, what’s it really all about and who are the peeps in charge of our tasty treats?

Dr. Maya Warren, Food $cientist extraordinaire, gives us The Breakdown in this four-part series of IWA$ (Interview With a $cientist). Have a taste of her cool as ice world in four scoops… The Work, The Nerdicus $tuff, The Path, and The Mix-Ins.

Check out The Work of the fantabulous Dr. Warren who churns out her daily grind, taste tests from Brazil to egypt, and cornbread… yes, cornbread ice cream!

The Basics

Who: Maya Warren, PhD

What: Ice Cream Scientist

Whereabouts: Cold Stone Creamery, City of Angels

Job Title: Sr. Director of International Research and Development & Taste Master

Years in the Game: 11

Education: PhD Food Science, BA Chemistry

The Daily

Pre-COVID-19 Dr. Warren found herself working at her Los Angeles office, kitchen lab, and traveling internationally. The traveling has stopped temporarily due to the pandemic, but she still gets on the phone bright and early to discuss mixes, dairy, and flavors with clients. Dr. Warren can still test the right taste and texture for a new flavor at her home kitchen lab that’s equipped with some specialty devices.

Tidbit: Pretty dope that Dr. Warren helps to figure out the dairy thing because it can be costly and difficult to acquire for clients in some countries. Getting the taste right with a spectrum of dairy sources is a key component of her expertise.

The Tase Buds

Dr. Warren explains that global palates call for global range, from Brazil and Pakistan to Nigeria and Egypt. The main question is… are you ready? Some ice cream concoctions make it to market and some stay in the binder of experiments. It turns out that the Thai iced tea flavor worked better than Thai curry flavor, and cake batter is a special inclination to Americans in the United States.

Market research usually hones in on the flavors that locals favor, but Dr. Warren lets us in on some intuitive methods that has led to the biggest hits and flops. To stay in tune with the culture, tasting ice creams on the market during her travels allows her to get a sense of what the locals like- from flavor to how they like to eat. This is what lead her to invent the Kenyan Fanta passion fruit soda sorbet.

Across Oceans… Across Cultures

With all the international travel, Dr. Warren definitely has experience in cross-cultural interactions. Her insight on doing professional work in other countries as an American woman with a PhD offers learning and useable points on our career trajectories. As she relates, it also helps to have a go-to person to assist in navigating with such diverse clients and consumers.

Beets, Hits, and Cornbread

Beet and goat cheese go together not only in a salad. You guessed it… Dr. Warren made this lovely concoction into an ice cream and it was crazy good because beets have sweetness and cheese has creaminess (more on that in Part II: The Nerdicus $tuff). And the double scoop hit… Everybody loves cornbread, who knew they would love it as an ice cream flavor? Dr. Warren, ice cream scientist extraordinaire, that’s who!