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Five Food Finds about Chocolate Chips

  1. Chocolate chips are a required ingredient in chocolate chip cookies, which were invented in 1933 when Ruth Graves Wakefield of the Toll House Inn in the town of Whitman, Massachusetts added cut-up chunks of a semi-sweet Nestlé chocolate bar to a cookie recipe.
  2. The cookies were a huge success, and Wakefield reached an agreement with Nestlé to add her recipe to the chocolate bar’s packaging in exchange for a lifetime supply of chocolate.
  3. Initially, Nestlé included a small chopping tool with the chocolate bars, but in 1939 they started selling the chocolate in chip (or “morsel”) form.
  4. The Nestlé brand Toll House cookies is named for the inn.
  5. Originally, chocolate chips were made of semi-sweet chocolate, but today there are many flavors.


Today’s Food History

on this day in…

1608 John Tradescant was born. He succeeded his father as naturalist and gardener to Charles I.

1693 Dom Perignon discovers the process for making champagne. “Come quickly, I am tasting the stars!”
(A widely held legend, but only a only a legend.)

1755 Nicolas-Jacque Conte was born. He invented the modern graphite pencil.

1958 The first potato flake manufacturing plant opened in Grand Forks, North Dakota.

1983 Dave Winfield, a N.Y. Yankee outfielder accidentally killed a seagull with an errant throw in a game against the Toronto Blue Jays. He was arrested, charged with cruelty to animals and had to post a $500 bond. The charges were dropped the following day.