I bet you didn’t know that the American classic dessert, the chocolate chip cookie, wasn’t invented until 1938.
The chocolate chip cookie was created by Framingham State University alumna, Ruth Graves Wakefield in Whitman, Massachusetts at the Toll House Inn. Wakefield added bits of chopped up chocolate from a Nestle chocolate bar to a batch of cookie dough in order to create the famous Tollhouse Chocolate Chip Cookie.
It is famously reported that Wakefield “accidentally” created the cookie after expecting the chunks of chocolate to melt while baking to make chocolate cookies. However, this is not the case. Wakefield deliberately invented the cookie to continue to serve newly styled baked goods to her customers.
Ruth Graves Wakefield, the inventor of the Tollhouse Chocolate Chip Cookie, was born in Easton, Massachusetts on June 17th, 1903. She was educated at Framingham State Normal School Department of Household Arts in 1924. Wakefield worked as a dietician and often lectured about foods.
In 1928, Wakefield and her husband, Kenneth Donald Wakefield, moved to Whitman, Massachuseets, and brought a tourist lodge named The Toll House Inn. Due to its location as a halfway point between Boston and New Bedford, it was historically a midway point where travelers often paid a toll, changed their horses, and ate a home cooked meal on their travels.
Ruth would cook and serve the food to their guests and eventually earned local fame for both her lobster rolls and her desserts. People from all across the region would visit the Toll House to try some of Ruth Graves Wakefield impressive home cooking.
After the chocolate chip cookie gained fame, Wakefield contacted Nestle and they created a deal: Wakefield would give the company rights to the recipe and the Toll House name for one U.S. Dollar and a lifetime supply of Nestle chocolate. Nestle began to market chocolate chips to be used for the chocolate chip cookie recipe and printed the recipe on the back of the package, as it still appears today.
Wakefield went on to write a cookbook, entitled Toll House Tried and True Recipes, which went through a total of 39 printings, beginning in 1940. It quickly became a bestseller. The 1938 edition of the recipe book was the first to feature the chocolate chip cookie recipe.
During World War 2, the U.S. soldiers from Massachusetts who were stationed overseas began to share their chocolate chip cookies, which they received in care packages from back home, with other soldiers from other parts of the country. Soon enough, hundreds of soldiers were writing back home, requesting the Toll House chocolate chip cookies for their own care packages. Wakefield became bombarded with letters from all over the world requesting her recipe.
Wakefield died on January 10th, 1977 at 73 years old and the Toll House burned down in 1984 from a kitchen fire. The Inn was never rebuilt. But the memory and spirit of Ruth Graves Wakefield will live on forever on the back of Nestle chocolate chip morsels.
photo source: https://www.justapinch.com/recipes/dessert/cookies/absolutely-original-toll-house-chocolate-cookies.html
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