Who Invented Chocolate Chip Cookies?

Who Invented Chocolate

The invention of chocolate chip cookies is often credited to Ruth Wakefield. With her husband, Wakefield ran the Tollhouse Inn in Massachusetts. The common story goes that Wakefield, who often made food for her guests, decided to make a chocolate butter cookie but didn’t have enough chocolate bars to produce one. Instead she chopped up the bars and added them to the butter cookie recipe.

The chocolate chip cookies were an immediate success, and became known as Tollhouse cookies. They became so popular, that Nestles Chocolate Company purchased the recipe with the rights to print the recipe on its semi-sweet chocolate bars. In exchange, Wakefield received free chocolate for life. At that point there still were not chips in chocolate chip cookies, but instead the cookies had chunks of chopped chocolate.

Nestles had some popularity with the Wakefield’s chocolate chip cookies, but the recipe became far easier to follow when in 1939 Nestles developed the standard chocolate chip, called a chocolate morsel. This easier way of combining the chocolate made chocolate chip cookies the most popular cookie in the US.

Today, numerous companies make chocolate chips, and many cooks favor one type of chips over another. Some chocolate chip cookies are considered substandard if they use a chip made with artificial vanilla, called vanillin. Others are quite happy with chocolate chips made with artificial vanilla.

The original recipe for chocolate chip cookies is still printed on Nestles' bags. Most other chocolate chips have some form of the recipe on them, though they have to make slight changes so as not to infringe on Nestles' copyright privileges. This can be easily accomplished, however, and most recipes are roughly identical.

Wakefield’s chocolate chip cookies were made with butter, and always included walnuts. Chocolate chip cookies are now often made with margarine, and may not include nuts. In fact in 1992 Barbara Bush and Hillary Clinton had a bake-off in Family Circle to see who made the best chocolate chip cookies. Clinton’s used margarine, and Bush stuck to butter.

Both varieties were praised but were distinctly different. Bush’s cookies were favored in the first taste groups, but Clinton’s were more popular at restaurants. The fate of the election clearly didn’t hang on cookie popularity, however, since Clinton’s husband won the election.

Variants in today’s chips can produce many different cookies, with different flavored chips. White chocolate or peanut butter chips are popular. M&Ms are also a favorite addition. Chocolate chips can be larger or smaller than Nestles Morsels and may be semi-sweet, milk chocolate or bittersweet.

Who Invented Chocolate