Chocolate chips were invented after chocolate chip cookies.
Chocolate 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.
