Enter the phrase "Chocolate Chip Cookie" into a search engine and you'll see over 2.5 million results. Some entries are certainly duplicates, but I think we can all agree that these are some darned popular cookies. And until the early 1930's nobody had ever eaten one. Ruth Wakefield created the cookie about 1933 at the Inn she and her husband Kenneth owned in Whitman, Massachusetts.

Ruth was born on June 17, 1903 in East Walpole, Massachusetts to Fred L. and Helen V. (Jones) Graves. Her parents separated when she was quite young and by 1910 she and her mother were living with her maternal grandparents, Horace W. and Mary J. Jones in Easton, Massachusetts.

Sometime before 1920 her mother moved about 20 miles away to Brockton, while Ruth continued to reside with her grandparents. Ruth's father had remarried in 1915, so her parents must have divorced, however her mother showed herself as "widowed" on census and city directory records, perhaps due to the stigma of divorce in that era.

In 1924 Ruth graduated from the all-female Framingham Normal School (now known as Framingham State University; males were not admitted until 1968). Her degree was from the Mary Hemenway Department of Household Arts, which had been established at Framingham in 1898 by the Boston School of Cookery.

After graduation Ruth worked for several years teaching Home Economics in Brockton, Massachusetts until her marriage to Kenneth D. Wakefield, a salesman with a meat processing plant. Kenneth, too, was an only child from a broken home, his parents having separated shortly after his birth.

After marriage, Ruth worked as a Hospital dietician and also had a job with a Gas and Electric company as a lecturer. Several of the online sources seem to have inflated the job descriptions to show Kenneth as an "executive" or a "manager" of the meat processing plant and Ruth as a "director" for the gas company, but the 1930 Census record for the couple does not bear that out.

In August 1930 the couple purchased a Cape Cod style building on Bedford Street in Whitman, Massachusetts and decorated it with colonial-style furnishings. I like to think of it as the type of place those 1930s-era screwball comedies might have been filmed, all the characters swanning about speaking in a mid-Atlantic accent.

Many sources assert that they used their "life savings" in order to make the purchase. I don't deny this claim, but since this was a mere 10 months after the start of the Great Depression, it seems they were lucky to have any savings remaining for such an expenditure.

The couple were, indeed hard workers: in 1930 they were renting part of a house from the widow Elizabeth Minard for $48 a month and by 1940 they were owners of a residence worth $25,000. They also often worked 84 hours in a week, but the most onerous tasks were probably handled by some of the almost 100 staff members they employed.

Their hard work must have paid quite well and also rather rapidly. While most people were struggling hand-to-mouth through the 1930s, by 1933 the Wakefields were taking annual cruise ship vacations, usually in First Class or Cabin Class accommodations, and in 1935 when armed robbers committed an after-hours heist at both the Inn and the couple's nearby home, they got away with $4,000 of Ruth's jewelry (adjusted for inflation, that would be over $80,000 in 2022 dollars).

There are a number of myths and even some mysteries surrounding Ruth and Donald Wakefield, their families, the cookie recipe, and also their Inn. In what was no doubt a bit of marketing contrivance, the couple named the building the "Toll House Inn" and claimed that it had, indeed, been used as such in Colonial times and that it was built in 1709. This story was included not only in the forward of Ruth's cookbook, but was also on their menu:

In August of 1930 we purchased Toll House which was built in 1709. It had been used as a toll house during the days when the whaling industry was at its height. Being just half way between Boston and New Bedford it made an ideal place for stage coach passengers to eat, while toll was paid and horses were changed.7

This myth has been debunked1,3 by several sources who show that the building was not built until 1817, so could hardly be called "Colonial" and it was never actually used as a toll house.

Although it isn't really a myth, there also seems to be a bit of mystery surrounding Ruth and Kenneth's children. Several sites, including Wikipedia, erroneously show Kenneth and Ruth having a son Kenneth D. Wakefield Jr. born in 1928. Both the 1930 and 1940 Census records6 show no such son. Records do show a son known as Kenneth "Don" Wakefield II (not, you will notice, "Junior"), born in November 1940 in Chicago, Illinois. The Wakefields also had a daughter, Mary Jane, born in 1942, also in Chicago, Illinois. None of the other sites I've read indicate these children were adopted, but I think that truth is almost inescapable, and was probably not a mystery in Whitman, Massachusetts at the time. It's possible that Ruth and Donald had a child in 1928 who did not survive, but if so I have been unable to find any record of a birth or death.

A few other myths surround Ruth's "invention" of the famous Toll House Crunch cookie--in part because it seems she may have been a bit cagey in telling the story of how the cookies came about. There are several stories about how the recipe was created, including a fairly ridiculous one in which a bar of Nestlé's chocolate fell off a shelf and "shattered." Another one which is repeated in quite a few online sources say Ruth cut up a bar of Nestlé's because she had run out of cocoa, and just added it to some "Butter Drop Do" cookie dough thinking it would somehow melt into the dough when baked.

To this I say: Bosh! The woman graduated and was a teacher in Home Economics, then served as a professional lecturer and had probably been baking half her life by the time she created these cookies. I find it nigh on to impossible to believe that Ruth, resident of Massachusetts, with a degree in from the Department of Household Arts (as you may remember the Department was established by the Boston School of Cookery) at Framingham would not have had a copy of The Boston Cooking-School Cook Book by Fannie Merritt Farmer.

I tend to concur with the claim that say she was trying to create a new cookie to serve instead of the pecan icebox cookies she normally served with ice cream at the Inn's restaurant, and I believe she probably perused her cookbook collection for inspiration.

The 1921 edition of Ms. Farmer's cookbook published by Little, Brown and Company, is available on the Hathi Trust website (other earlier editions are also available, but it seems likely that Ruth would have an edition from her college days).

Page 491 shows two recipes (see end of writeup for the recipes), one for Chocolate Cookies and one for German Chocolate Cookies--which I personally think may be part of the inspiration for Ruth's invention, since the second recipe calls for "grating" two bars of German Chocolate. Who can tell--perhaps Ruth thought chopping the bars into pieces would be easier?

Ruth would later say that, indeed, the recipe was not an accident and that she and her assistant, Pastry Cook Sue Brides, developed the recipe after several tries until she was satisfied with the results. I think most bakers would agree that when it comes to making most cookies, the "formula" is cream the butter and sugar(s), add the egg(s) and flavoring(s), then stir in the combined (i.e. sifted or stirred) flour and leavenings, then stir in any additional goodies. Baking is, pretty much, science--but it isn't Rocket Science.

However they were created, the cookies which Ruth dubbed "Toll House Crunch Cookies" became an instant hit and Ruth included it in her own cookbook Ruth Wakefield’s Recipes Tried and True, which may have first been self-published and was sold at the Inn7, but was later picked up by Little, Brown and Company (the same publishers who printed Fannie Farmer's cookbook).

Eventually the increased sales--500%, per one source1--of Nestlé's Semisweet Chocolate bars came to the attention of Andrew Nestlé who entered into an agreement with Ruth to publish her recipe on his bars of chocolate along with a drawing of the Inn and its location. There is a bit of a myth about the agreement; many sources claim the agreement was for $1.00 plus a lifetime supply of chocolate, and some sites claim that Ruth said she never received the $1.00.

Whether she received the cash or not, the free advertising and a lifetime supply of chocolate to a very busy restaurant (the Wakefields owned it until 1966) was no doubt a good deal financially.

Of course Nestlés also prospered from the agreement. The recipe was originally printed on their 7-oz bars of chocolate which was closely scored to more easily produce the correct size pieces, but they soon decided it would be easier to sell the chocolate as "morsels" which they are officially named to the present time. Ironically, many of the recent variations of Chocolate Chip Cookie recipes call for cutting bars of expensive quality "premier" chocolate, such as Valrhona, into pieces to make "upscale" cookies.

The Toll House Inn restaurant was open from 12 noon until 9:00 pm, and I must confess I got a bit hungry reading their menu from 1940. Who wouldn't want a whole broiled live lobster for $2.25 or Filet Mignon ("a thick juicy steak with large plump mushrooms") for $2.50? Of course if you just wanted a little afternoon nosh, between 3pm to 4pm, for 40¢ you could have tea or coffee along with either cinnamon toast, or toast with marmalade, or cake or ice cream. You could also have a waffle with your tea or coffee, but that would set you back 50¢. (FWIW: $2.25 in 1940 dollars is equivalent to almost $45 2022 dollars, but when I checked online there is a restaurant in Boston named Jack's Summer Shack which sells wood grilled lobsters for $70 to $90).

Whether you consider them a true invention or just a happy accident, the next time you bite into a chocolate chip cookie, raise your glass of milk in her honor and please spare a kind thought for Ruth (and maybe one for Sue Brides as well).


THE RECIPES

From Hathi Trust, the 1921 version of The Boston Cooking-School Cook Book (page 491)



Chocolate Cookies
1/2 cup butter
1 cup sugar
1 egg
1/4 teaspoon salt
2 ozs. Baker's chocolate
2-1/2 cups flour (scant)
1 egg
2 teaspoons baking powder
1/4 cup milk

Cream the butter, add sugar gradually, egg well beaten, salt, and chocolate melted. Beat well, and add flour mixed and sifted with baking powder alternately with milk. Chill, roll very thin, then shape with a small cutter, first dipped in four, and bake in a moderate oven .

German Chocolate Cookies
2 eggs
1 cup brown sugar
2 bars German chocolate
1/4 teaspoon cinnamon
1/2 teaspoon salt
Grated rind 1/2 lemon
1-1/3 cups almonds, blanched and chopped
1 cup flour
1 teaspoon baking powder

Beat eggs until light, add sugar, gradually, and continue the beating; then add chocolate, grated, and remaining ingredients . Drop from tip of spoon on a buttered sheet , and bake in a moderate oven .



Also available from Hathi Trust, the 1940 version of Ruth Wakefield's Toll house Tried and True Recipes (page 216)

Toll House Chocolate Crunch Cookies
Cream
1 cup butter, add
3/4 cup brown sugar
3/4 cup granulated sugar and
2 eggs beaten whole. Dissolve
1 tsp. soda in
1 tsp. hot water, and mix
alternately with
2-1/4 cups flour sifted with
1 tsp. salt. Lastly add
1 cup chopped nuts and
2 bars (7-oz.) Nestles yellow
label chocolate, semisweet,
which has been cut in
pieces the size of a pea.
Flavor with
1 tsp. vanilla and drop half
teaspoons on a greased
cookie sheet. Bake 10 to
12 minutes in 375° oven.
Makes 100 cookies.


The "original" 1796 version of Butter Drop Do cookies was from Amelia Simmons' book, which is also available from Hathi Trust as a 1963 reprint: American Cookery: or, The art of dressing viands, fish, poultry, ... etc.

Butter Drop Do Cookies
No.3 . Butter drop do : Rub one quarter of a pound butter, one pound sugar, sprinkled with mace, into one pound and a quarter flour, add four eggs , one glass rose-water, bake as No.1*.
*(Note No. 1 instructions indicate: knead it stiff, shape it to your fancy, bake 15 minutes.)


Main Sources (I consulted many more sources, but there was a lot of redundancy and many(!) pop-up ads):
  1. Cook's Info (this site seems to be the best-researched and most accurate, however it does show the wrong date of birth for Ruth and Kenneth's son)
  2. A Brief History of the Chocolate Chip
  3. Wikipedia Article on the Toll House Inn
  4. Info on Framingham State University
  5. Hathi Trust Digital Library
  6. Ancestry.com
  7. ca. 1950 version of the Toll House Inn Menu (the prices are a bit higher than the 1940s version, but this one is much easier to read)