Do you remember the first time you ever had a chocolate chip
cookie? Probably not. For most of us in the United States, it was probably the
first type of cookie we ever had (if you don’t count Animal Crackers). And,
more than likely, Dad gave us a first taste when Mom wasn’t looking…
Like all things, chocolate chip cookies have a history. (No,
God didn’t create them on the 8th day of creation…) In fact, they
didn’t come into our lives until somewhere around 1938. Which means my
grandparents probably never had a chocolate chip cookie as a kid! Can you even
imagine?
The story begins in Massachusetts (like many stories in the
United States) in the town of Whitman about 25 miles south and a little east of
Boston at the Toll House Inn. There are two versions:
1) Ruth Wakefield, the inn’s proprietress, ran out of
chocolate for her chocolate cookie recipe one day. So, she chopped up a bar of
Nestlé chocolate and threw the pieces into her recipe, hoping that the
chocolate would melt and make the cookie chocolate. Of course, that didn’t
happen and the chocolate chip cookie was born!
2) George Boucher, a chef at the Toll House Inn, was making
a batch of sugar cookies. The vibrations of his mixer caused a bar of Nestlé
chocolate to fall into the dough, breaking into chunks and mixing into the
dough. Rather than through the batch out, he baked the cookies as usual. And,
behold, a chocolate chip cookie!
You can judge for yourself which story is more likely. In
the end, it doesn’t matter. By the following year, the recipe had been printed
in lots of New England newspapers. A few years later, Nestlé created chocolate
chip morsels so housewives around the nation could save time from all the
chopping of chocolate bars. Mrs. Wakefield sold her recipe to Nestlé for a
lifetime supply of chocolate and today you won’t find a bag of them without a
variation of that recipe printed on it. And an American legend was born.
So, run to your kitchen and whip up a batch of chocolate
chip cookies. For who doesn’t want to celebrate the creation of such a
wonderful American dessert?
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