The chocolate chip cookie was invented by a lady named Ruth Wakefield in 1933 and, like many great recipes today, it was discovered completely by accident. Ruth was the owner of the Toll House Inn, which was located in Whitman, Massachusetts, which was a very popular place to enjoy good home-cooked meals.
They say Ruth regularly made bakery chocolate chip cookies but one day she ran out and only had access to a semi sweet Nestle chocolate so she broke the bar into pieces and mixed it into the batter thinking it would melt and blend. with her. And of course the chocolate chunks didn’t mix like bakers’ chocolate and the Nestle Toll House chocolate chip cookie was born.
Ruth Wakefield then sold the recipe to Nestlé in exchange for a lifetime supply of chocolate chips. Since then, Nestlé has printed the recipe on the back of every bag of chocolate chips they have sold in North America with a slight variation that is the option of using margarine over butter.
During World War II, toll cookies were sent to Massachusetts soldiers, who would then share them with other American soldiers from different parts of the states. This led to several soldiers writing home asking for Nestlé toll cookies, prompting many people to contact Ruth for her recipe, sparking a nationwide craze for these delicious cookies.
However, the history of chocolate chip cookies has more than one story. George Boucher and his daughter Carol Cavanagh worked together at the toll house inn and Carol claims that Wakefield, being an experienced baker and book publisher, would know the propriety of chocolate and would know that it would not melt or mix.
Boucher claims the true story is that his electric mixer knocked some Nestle chocolate off the shelf into his sugar cookie mix due to vibrations and it mixed and formed chocolate chunks in the mix. Boucher claims that Wakefield wanted to throw out the mixture because in his eyes it was ruined, but he wanted to keep it and bake it.
And he did so by forming chocolate chip cookies. Who knows if his story is true or not, but it very well could be.