Israeli ice cream lovers may have to find a new flavour, after Israel's chief rabbinate suggested Häagen-Dazs products were not kosher.

The ice cream company uses liquid milk instead of milk powder for flavours such as pralines and cream and crème brulee, which the chief rabbinate's kashrut department said represented "a severe infringement of kashrut procedures."

The department said: "We request from those providing kashrut certificates not to permit the sale of this product in places with supervision."

Häagen-Dazs, like its rival Ben & Jerry's, has Jewish roots. The company began scooping under that name in New York in the 1950s, after Manchester-born Rose Vesel and her Polish immigrant husband Reuben Mattus came up with the idea of a gourmet ice-cream business.

It was Rose who came up with the Danish - sounding name, assuming that Americans would be more comfortable buying a dairy product from a Scandinavian business.