The chocolate chip cookie was invented by Ruth Graves Wakefield. She owned the Toll House Inn, in Whitman, Massachusetts, a very popular restaurant that featured home cooking in the 1930s. Her cookbook, Toll House Tried and True Recipes, was first published in 1936 by M. Barrows & Company, New York. The 1938 edition of the cookbook was the first to include the recipe “Toll House Chocolate Crunch Cookie” which rapidly became a favorite cookie in American homes.
Wakefield was educated at Framingham State Normal School Department of Household Arts in 1924. Then, she worked as a dietitian and lectured about foods. In 1928, she and her husband Kenneth Donald Wakefield (1897 – 1997) had a son, Kenneth Donald Wakefield Jr.
In 1930, she and her husband bought a tourist lodge (the Toll House Inn) in the town of Whitman, Massachusetts in Plymouth County. Located about halfway between Boston and New Bedford, it was a place where passengers had historically paid a toll, changed horses and ate home-cooked meals. When the Wakefields opened their business, they named the establishment the Toll House Inn. Ruth cooked and served all the food and soon gained local fame for her lobster dinners and desserts. The restaurant had many visitors, including Massachusetts’ Senator John F. Kennedy. Her chocolate chip cookies soon became very popular. She invented chocolate chip cookies around 1938.
