How the Potato Chips Were Invented?

The world's most consumed food today is rice and second comes the potato. The thin slices of crisp potato chips are America's snack food. These thin slices of potato chips as we know today, exist because of a chef's fit of anger and his intention to get back at an unreasonable diner.

From March 10, 1785 to September 26, 1789, Thomas Jefferson served as the US Ambassador to France. One of the famous cuisines that he enjoyed during his stay there was the popular French-fried potatoes. He loved them so much that he introduced the recipe to America and served them to his guests at Monticello.

As a result, the French-fried (thick-cut French style) potatoes gained tremendous popularity and became a regular dinner dish.

During one summer of 1853, Chef George Crum of Moon Lake Lodge Restaurant, in Saratoga Springs, New York, prepared the regular French-fried potatoes for a fastidious dinner guest who promptly rejected them for being too thick. Chef Crum served that diner with a thinner batch which was also rejected. Annoyed and exasperated, the chef decided to get back at the tough diner by making the potatoes so thin and crisp that even the fork could not skewer them.

Instead of riling that diner, the paper-thin and crispy potato slices appealed to that diner so much he requested for more. Soon, all the other diners began to request for the paper-thin and crispy potato chips and they became a regular, house specialty item called Saratoga Chips on the menu.

The popularity of the paper-thin potato chips grew unabated and soon it was packaged and sold. Eventually, Chef Crum opened his own chips restaurant.

Source:

Panati's Extraordinary Origins of Everyday Things, Charles Panati, 1^st Edition, 1987, Harper & Row, New York