Life & English: Who invented Chocolate Chip Cookies?

Have you ever wondered how new foods get invented? Sometimes people discover a new food by accident. Other times, they get the perfect recipe after lots of experimenting. Here is the story of Chocolate Chip Cookies.

Chocolate chip cookies seem like they've been around forever. Really, they are just a little less than 100 years old. A woman named Ruth Wakefield invented chocolate chip cookies. Wakefield and her husband Kenneth owned a restaurant in Massachusetts. It was called the Toll House Inn. The inn was famous for its desserts. Wakefield's butterscotch cookies were a big favorite. One day, Wakefield tried something new. She cut a chocolate bar into small pieces and added it to the butterscotch cookie dough. The chocolate melted into gooey chunks in the cookies. Guests loved the new cookies. Wakefield called them "Toll House Chocolate Crunch Cookies." Soon, Wakefield's cookie recipe ran in a Boston newspaper. Wakefield also added the recipe to her cookbook.

The ingredients included two Nestlé semi-sweet chocolate bars cut into tiny pieces. Nestlé is a food company. It sells chocolate and other foods and drinks. The recipe became very popular. People started buying up Nestlé chocolate bars to make Wakefield's cookies. Nestlé even added lines to the chocolate bars to make them easier to break apart. Later, Nestlé began making chocolate chips. You may have seen bags of these chocolate chips at the grocery store, or made cookies with them yourself. Wakefield's chocolate chip cookie recipe is on the back of every bag.

Collected & edited by QM