Did you know that this fan-favorite comfort food started out as a tool for testing oven temperatures? Wild! We've come a long way from those original tough, bland biscuits to hundreds of different sweet and flavorful cookies. Let's see just how cookies evolved since the 7th century A.D. and how chocolate chip cookies have been established into American history!
Early Beginnings
By definition, a cookie are a variety of hand-held, flour-based (although they can be flourless like macaroons), sweet cakes, either crisp or soft. According to culinary historians, the first written record of cookies was their use as test cakes before the invention of thermostats, where a small bit of cake batter was baked to test the oven temperature (so as not to ruin the whole cake). Cookies are possibly one of the oldest desserts, with origins that can be traced back to 7th century A.D. in Persia, one of the first countries to cultivate and popularize sugar after it was brought there (Persia was also famous for their luxurious cakes and pastries). From its humble beginnings as something more akin to a savory cracker, these sweet cookies were created by cooks in the Middle East who enriched plain grain-water paste mixtures with eggs, butter and cream and sweetened them with fruit, honey and finally sugar. After the Muslim conquest of the Iberian peninsula (where Spain is located) in the 8th century, and the later crusades and development of the spice trade, these cookies spread to Europe. By the 14th century, cookies were common-place and eaten by people of all walks of life throughout Europe. Renaissance cookbooks were rich in these cookie recipes.
As long-term travel became more widespread, biscuits and dry cookies were often brought along as a food source. Jumble was a popular cookie that was made from nuts, flour, butter, eggs, sugar, and various spices in the shape of rings or rolls. Due to their dense and dry texture, they could be stored for up to a year without becoming too stale - much longer than cake. Jumbles were thought to have been brought to America on the Mayflower. Today, a flat and circular type of jumble is likely to be known as a sugar cookie!
Dutch and English immigrants in the early 1600s are thought to have brought the first cookies to America (like the jumble). The butter cookies we eat today strongly resemble English teacakes and Scotch shortbread (these cookies are still called teacakes in southern US). While the English referred to these first cookies as teacakes or biscuits, the Dutch called theirs koekjes (meaning small cake), and this word was later Anglicized to the name cookie we are all familiar with. The first reference to a cookie in America was 1703, when they were served by the Dutch at a funeral in New York.
In the 1600-1800s, most cookies were baked in homes on special occasions because of the cost of sweeteners and the amount of work needed to make them. Recipes for jumbles and macaroons, based on beaten egg whites and almonds, were common in the earliest American cookbooks because they were relatively cheap and easy to make. Gingerbread was also a popular cookie. As kitchen technology improved in the early 1900s, especially with the increased use of ovens with regulated temperatures (we now have thermostats!), baking became much easier. With the addition of low prices for sugar and flour, as well as introduction of chemical leavening agents like baking soda, cookie recipes grew to all the varieties we have now.
Cookies in the America
The geographic change and development of the U.S. was reflected in many cookie recipes. First, the expansion of railroads in the early 1800s gave cooks access to coconuts from the South. Later on, oranges from the West were found in new kinds of cookies. In the early 1900s, the Kellogg brothers in Michigan invented cornflakes and cookies were made with the new cereal products. In the 1930s, with the invention of the electric refrigerator, icebox cookies became popular. Today there are hundreds of cookie recipes in the United States.
Fun Fact: In the United States, August 4 is National Chocolate Chip Cookie Day.
Chocolate Chip Cookies
Chocolate chip cookies are a favorite among many, and they even have variations from soft and chewy to thin and crispy ones. The story of how this cookie was accidentally invented is quite famous. It was all thanks to Ruth Graves Wakefield who ran the Toll House Restaurant. This restaurant site was once a real toll house built in 1709, where stage coach passengers ate while their horses were changed. Like highway tolls today, a fee was taken for use of the highway between Boston and New Bedford, a prosperous whaling town at the time, so this was the perfect location for their restaurant. Eventually, the Wakefields sold the restaurant in 1966, and sadly it burned down on New Year’s Eve in 1984.
But back to the cookies. One of Ruth’s favorite recipes was for “Butter Drop Do” cookies which used baker’s chocolate. One day in 1937, Ruth found herself without this chocolate. Instead, she substituted with a bar of Nestle's semi-sweet chocolate, which she chopped into pieces and stirred the into the cookie dough. She assumed that the chocolate would melt and spread throughout each cookie like the baker's chocolate. However, the chocolate chunks held their form in the freshly baked cookies, creating chocolate chip cookies! Ruth called her new creation the Toll House Crunch Cookies, which soon became a favorite with guests at the inn. Her recipe was published in newspapers in the New England area, and word of the cookie spread far and wide.
This cookie became a national sensation when Betty Crocker mentioned it in her radio series “Famous Foods From Famous Eating Places" in 1939. At this time, Ruth approached the Nestle company which agreed to print the Toll House Cookie recipe on the wrapper of the semi-sweet chocolate bar. Nestle then developed a scored chocolate bar so that getting those chocolate chunks would be easier. As the story goes, part of this agreement between Ruth and Nestle included giving Ruth a lifetime supply of chocolate so she could make these delicious cookies for years.
This chocolate chip cookie is also tied to many events of American history. First, it was the perfect antidote to the Great Depression. In a small, cheap hand-held serving, it contained the rich sweetness and comfort that millions of people had lacked in the years before. A warm, freshly baked chocolate chip cookie with the chocolate still melting became the perfect comfort food for these people. Additionally, America’s entry into the WWII only enhanced the popularity of this cookie as well. Toll House cookies were commonly found in the care packages shipped to American soldiers fighting in the war. Even though chocolate became short in supply domestically, women on the home front were encouraged to use any bit they had to bake cookies for the soldiers overseas. The Toll House restaurant’s gift shop sent thousands of cookies to these soldiers, and this delicious treat's fame was boosted by wartime soldier consumption. Toll House cookies even rivaled apple pie as the most popular dessert in the country at the time!
In the postwar years, the chocolate-chip cookie went from homemade to mass-produced in factories. In the 1950s, Nestle and Pillsbury began selling refrigerated chocolate chip cookie dough in supermarkets, while Nabisco launched the packaged Chips Ahoy cookies in 1963. The Baby Boom generation, which had their childhood revolved around the Toll House cookies, tried to bring back the original taste of these homemade desserts in stores that sold fresh-baked cookies. Famous Amos, Mrs. Fields, and David’s Cookies all opened their first stores in the 1970s. By the mid-1980s, there were more than 1200 cookie stores in business across the country.
Left: Nestle's chocolate chip cookie dough. Middle: Packaged Chips Ahoy cookies. Right: Mrs. Field's cookie chain store
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Fun Facts:
Ruth sold legal rights to the Toll House trademark to Nestle. In 1983, Nestle lost its exclusive right to the trademark in federal court, so toll house is now a descriptive term for a cookie.
in 1997, a 3rd grade class in Massachusetts proposed that the chocolate chip cookie be the official cookie of the Commonwealth - and it was!
Modern Twists
Of course there are many variations to cookies, from snickerdoodles to oatmeal raisin, but those will come in later posts! For the chocolate chip cookie specifically, there were so many new adaptations of this wonderful dessert. There was the Chipwich (ice cream cookie sandwich), the Taste of Nature Cookie Dough Bite, and the Pookie (pie coated with chocolate-chip-cookie dough). However, the most culturally significant adaptation was Ben & Jerry’s Chocolate Chip Cookie Dough ice cream. The idea came from an anonymous note left by a customer and was soon in high demand in their stores. It took Ben and Jerry five years to mechanize the process of hand-mixing the frozen cookie dough with the ice cream, but it worked! Today, it is still among Ben & Jerry’s favorites.
Cookies have a long history crossing many countries, from Persia to England and America, where the famous chocolate chip cookies were miraculously invented. With the advent of new kitchen technologies, ingredients, and cultural/geographic change, many new recipes were developed. The chocolate chip cookie is especially intertwined with American history, from the Great Depression to WWII and the age of consumerism and Baby Boomers. I am eternally grateful for their invention, and the invention of Chocolate Chip Cookie Dough ice cream that came after, as some of the most delicious treats of all time. I hope this post was enlightening, and now that you know some cool cookie history and culture facts, I can say for sure that "you're a smart cookie!"
Link to my chocolate chip cookie recipe (chewy AND crispy cookie).
Link to my post on the chemistry & science behind cookies.
Want to Learn More? (always cite your sources, kids)
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