Ruth Wakefield ran out of baker's chocolate and invented the chocolate chip cookie

In the 1930s, Ruth Wakefield and her husband Kenneth ran the Toll House Inn in Whitman, Massachusetts. Ruth was a trained home economist and chef who took pride in her cooking. One of her signature items was a butterscotch nut cookie that guests loved. One day, she ran out of baker's chocolate — the kind that melts evenly into dough — and substituted broken pieces of Nestlé semi-sweet chocolate, expecting them to melt and spread through the batter the same way.

They did not. The semi-sweet chocolate chunks held their shape. When the cookies came out of the oven, the chocolate was still in discrete pieces. The cookies were a happy accident: the chocolate bits stayed soft and chewy while the cookie itself was crisp. Wakefield served them anyway, and guests loved them.

In 1938, Wakefield published the recipe in her cookbook Toll House Tried and True Recipes under the name 'Toll House Chocolate Crunch Cookies.' The recipe spread through Boston newspapers and radio. By 1939, Nestlé had struck a deal with Wakefield to print the recipe on its chocolate bar wrappers — and soon began selling chocolate bars pre-scored into 160 segments, then pre-cut morsels. The arrangement reportedly gave Wakefield a dollar and a lifetime supply of chocolate.

During World War II, soldiers from Massachusetts received care packages with Toll House cookies and spread the taste across the country. By the 1950s, chocolate chip cookies were the most popular cookie in America. Famous Amos (1975) and Mrs. Fields (1977) built national chains on the recipe. In 1997, Massachusetts declared the chocolate chip cookie the official state cookie.