Emma Abramovitz was a young American woman growing up in Brooklyn in the 1920s, the daughter of Jewish immigrants who came to America seeking a better life. Like many girls, she finished her schooling early and took a job to help support her family. But Emma had something different in mind. She had watched her mother, Bessie, make her crunchy mandelbread for as long as she could remember. Emma began to experiment with her own take on mandelbread—shortening the bake time, trying new ingredients, and aiming for Something Different, Something Better, Something Modern-American—and she came up with ”Mondlebrot.”