The Origin of Potato Chips

American cook George Crum, chef at Moon’s Lake House in Saratoga Springs, accidentally made potato chips in 1853 when a dissatisfied customer, millionaire Cornelius Vanderbilt, sent back his fried potato slices because he found them too thick, too soggy and not salty enough.

‘Fine,’ thought Crum, slicing the potatoes paper-thin and frying them so thoroughly that they were impossible to eat with a fork. What was intended as an insult turned into an overwhelming success. Vanderbilt loved them, the restaurant’s owner, Harriet Moon, made them the signature dish and a few years later Crum opened his own restaurant, where millionaires such as Vanderbilt stood in line for hours for ‘Saratoga chips’, a ‘luxury delicacy’.

Nonsense

A nice story, and widespread too, but absolutely untrue, food historian April White states in her book History is Served.

Vanderbilt was not a difficult customer; in fact, he was not a customer at all that summer because he was travelling through Europe with his family. Moreover, Moon’s Lake House did not yet exist in 1853, as the Moon family only bought the property in 1854. And yet the ‘Potato Chip/Snack Food Association’ put up a real sign with ‘historical info’ at the restaurant in honor of Crum’s invention.

But that’s not all: crispy fried potatoes were not new in Saratoga at all in the summer of 1853. An article in the New York Herald had already written in July 1849 about ‘Eliza, the cook,’ whose ‘potato frying reputation is one of the prominent matters of remark at Saratoga.’ 

Origin

In fact, research by historian Dave Mitchell shows that it is still questionable whether chips originated in Saratoga at all. ‘We will probably never know the true origin of chips,’ Mitchell concludes.

A shame, but hey: it doesn’t make us eat any less of them.