The History of Chocolate Chip Cookies
November 3, 2011
Homemade chocolate chip cookies almost always bring a smile to one’s face not only because of its pleasant taste but also because of how we grew up eating them.
What many people don't know is that, like the most renowned inventions, these treats were just accidentally created by Ruth Graves Wakefield back in 1933. Wakefield was the proprietor of the Toll House Inn, which was located on the outskirts of Whitman, Massachusetts. It was a famed place then to get some scrumptious home-cooked meals. Ruth's strategy to provide her patrons an additional serving of entrées for them to take home, along with her homemade cookies as dessert, made the inn all the more popular.
One day, Wakefield was preparing one of her favorite recipes, Butter Drop Do cookies. She commonly made the recipe using bakers’ chocolate, but she realized she had run out of it and only had Nestle semi sweet chocolate on hand. She then thought of utilizing it so she mixed it into the batter thinking it would melt and blend well. The chocolate pieces certainly did not mix like the bakers’ chocolate. Instead, it held its shape and softened to a creamy texture, and the rest is chocolate chip history.
Ruth and Nestle came up with an agreement that would allow Nestle to print the "Toll House Cookie" recipe on its packaging in exchange for a lifetime supply of chocolates.
During World War II, Nestle Toll House Cookies were sent to GI's from Massachusetts who would then distribute them to other American soldiers. This caused some soldiers to write home and ask for Nestle Toll House cookies, which made the cookies all the rage.
However, the history of chocolate chip cookies has many different versions. One of which states that George Boucher, together with his daughter Carol Cavanagh, worked at the Toll House inn. According to Boucher, some Nestle chocolate bars by the shelf were dislodged and fell right off into a mixer that was currently creating a batch of cookie dough, forming little chunks of chocolate in the mix. Boucher claims Wakefield wanted to trash the cookie dough mixture, but he wanted to keep it and bake it.
These cookies are still tremendously well-liked even to this day in spite of how they originated, and we can assume this will hold true for quite a stretch of time.
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