Their full name is chocolate chip cookies, but everyone simply knows them as cookies: they are the classic chocolate chip cookies that originated in the United States during the first half of the 20th century but became famous throughout the world in the second half of the century. Particularly popular for breakfast but also as a quick and delicious snack, cookies are also the protagonists of many American dessert recipes. But who invented them? Her name was Ruth Wakefield and she was an innkeeper in Whitman, Massachusetts.
Who is Ruth Wakefield and How Did She Invent Cookies?
In this case, we're not talking about a housewife who decides to go into business after noticing a need to fill, but about a true innkeeper who experimented with new recipes every day. In the midst of the Great Depression, Ruth Wakefield invented one of America's most beloved biscuits: the cookie.
In fact, she owned, together with her husband Kenneth, the Toll House Inn, a family-run restaurant opened in 1930 in Whitman, a 40-minute drive from Boston. She was an excellent pastry chef whose desserts attracted customers from all over the state. Ruth was educated—she graduated from Framingham State Normal School in 1924 with a degree in Domestic Arts—and had worked as a dietitian and culinary lecturer before opening her own restaurant. Her restaurant was also a model training ground and a training ground for chefs, waiters, and other professionals in the industry, who could learn a rigorous method focused entirely on customer satisfaction.
The first version of the cookies, then called Toll House cookies, was included in a 1938 cookbook, "Toll House Tried and True Recipes." It seems to have been an almost entirely accidental creation. Apparently, the innkeeper, having run out of hazelnuts she used to make a cookie to accompany her ice cream, decided to break up a chocolate bar and mix the pieces into her butter cookie dough. Upon tasting the raw dough, Ruth immediately knew her creation would be a success, but she certainly didn't know that the cookies would become among the most famous in the world.
Although she also contributed – and not a little – to this fame: she was the proponent of an effective marketing strategy that allowed the cookies to gain initial visibility. Ruth, in fact, had a flair for marketing: she made a deal with Nestlé, selling them her recipe for a few dollars, which brought enormous visibility to her brand and the product, because the recipe was printed on the wrappers of the chocolate bars attributing it to her. The peak of fame came in particular during the Second World War, when her cookies – baked according to her recipe – were offered to soldiers at the front: the cookies thus became almost patriotic symbols.
Mrs. Ruth Wakefield remained a local culinary icon until her restaurant closed in 1967, but in the years that followed, her fame grew even more: we are essentially talking about the first celebrity chef in US history. Unfortunately, a fire on New Year's Eve 1985 destroyed the restaurant, which had since been sold, razing it to the ground. Today, nothing remains of the old place, but Ruth Wakefield's cookies will always remain one of the most iconic recipes in the United States.
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