The History Of Potato Chips Doesn't Start With A Disgruntled Customer

People tend to find happy accidents a lot more attractive than tedious reality. The decades Isaac Newton spent formulating his theory of universal gravitation is a lot less sexy than a single apple bonking him on the head and giving him the idea all in one go. The anecdote about the delayed explosion in "The Dark Knight" being an accident is as well-worn as Viggo Mortensen breaking his toe kicking that helmet, but there's not a lick of truth to it. One could come up with a thesis about how it speaks to people wanting the rewards of inspiration without the hard work that comes with it, but, for now, it's worth pointing out that this sort of thing happens all the time in food origin myths, too. Case in point: the potato chip.

The story you're likely to hear is that the potato chip was invented by George Crum, a legendary part-Black, part-Native American chef in 19th-century New York, purely out of spite. As the story goes, a diner at Moon's Lake House (the Saratoga restaurant at which Crum worked) sent back their fried potatoes, complaining that they were too thick and soggy. (In some tellings, the customer was railroad magnate Cornelius Vanderbilt; in others, he's just some anonymous jerk.) Fed up with this nonsense, Crum cut paper-thin slices of potato (possibly russet, the best for french fries and potato chips alike), fried them up, and served them, only to find that the customer loved them. The rest, as they say, is history — or is it?

As with other neat culinary origin stories, such as Ruth Wakefield's "accidental" invention of the chocolate chip cookie or a jilted wife giving the world Nashville hot chicken, the truth is much more complicated. George Crum — a man no one could accuse of being overly self-effacing — never claimed to have invented the potato chip, and the legend only began to spread after his death. Although he did popularize the potato chip (which remained primarily a restaurant side dish until later in the 19th century), there is no evidence that he invented them.

His sister Catherine, on the other hand, did claim to have invented the chip, describing a happy accident of her own: Apparently, a sliver of potato was mistakenly dropped into hot frying oil, resulting in the crunchy chip we know and love. This, too, is a matter of debate. There are recipes and reports of thinly sliced fried potatoes going back to 1817, and, in fact, the Crums may not have even been the first people to make potato chips in Saratoga. A chef named Eliza, renowned for her potato-frying prowess, was profiled by the New York Herald four years before Crum's supposed run-in with the picky diner. Still, no matter how they came about, it's hard to argue with the results. (Though now we're just waiting for the "origin story" of these margarita-flavored potato chips.)