Chocolate chips were invented after chocolate chip cookies.

U.S. History

C hocolate chip cookies are going on 100 years old. The classic treat was popularized in the 1930s by Massachusetts chef Ruth Wakefield, who served the sweet snack as an accompaniment to ice cream at her popular restaurant, the Toll House Inn. Originally called a "Toll House cookie" or "chocolate crunch cookie," her creation became a sensation. After she published the recipe in a late-1930s edition of her cookbook Ruth Wakefield's Tried and True Recipes, it was syndicated in newspapers and earned her a spot on a popular Betty Crocker radio program.

When the recipe first started making its way into American kitchens, you couldn't buy a bag of chocolate chips like you can at a grocery store today. Instead, bakers had to chip morsels off a large block of baking chocolate — Wakefield used an ice pick for the inaugural batch — which is how the treat got its current name, chocolate "chip" cookies. That all changed in 1939, when Nestle got Wakefield's permission to use her recipe to promote its chocolate, and started including the recipe in advertisements. (Nestle reportedly only paid Wakefield $1 for the rights to the recipe, though it did provide her with free chocolate for life and hired her as a consultant.) Soon, Nestle started creating products to go with the popular recipe. In 1939, the company came out with a semisweet chocolate bar scored into 160 pieces to make breaking up the chocolate a little easier — no ice pick required. The next year, Nestle started selling the small Toll House Semi-Sweet Morsels that most people know as chocolate chips today.

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By the Numbers

Chocolate chips found by third-graders in a Chips Ahoy! bag advertised as having 1,000 chips

680

Year the toll house that became Toll House Inn was built

1709

Did you know?

Chocolate chips used to be molasses candy.

Chocolate chips as we know them today were created by Nestle in 1940, but before that, the term had a different meaning. Confections known as chocolate chips were a mainstay of candy shops in the late 19th century and early 20th century, but these chocolate chips were chocolate-covered molasses treats — they were called "chips" for their thin, oblong shape. A 1905 advertisement in The Theatre magazine described the treat as "pure honey-molasses taffy, spun out to finest, airiest crisp, then coated with rich, pure chocolate."