Wicks recalled the invention of Saratoga Chips as an accident: she had "chipped off a piece of the potato which, by the merest accident, fell into the pan of fat. She fished it out with a fork and set it down upon a plate beside her on the table." Her brother tasted it, declared it good, and said, "We’ll have plenty of these." In a 1932 interview with "the Saratogian" newspaper, her grandson, John Gilbert Freeman, asserted Wicks's role as the true inventor of the potato chip.