Ruth Graves Wakefield

Ruth Wakefield was born "Ruth Jones Graves", daughter of Fred Graves and the former Helen Vest Jones (Helen Graves), in East Walpole, Massachusetts on June 17, 1903.[2] Wakefield grew up in Easton, Massachusetts, and graduated from Oliver Ames High School in 1920.[3] Wakefield was educated at Framingham State Normal School Department of Household Arts in 1924. Wakefield worked at Brockton High School as a home economics teacher and also worked as a hospital dietician and service director for a utility company.[4] In 1928, she and her husband Kenneth Donald Wakefield (1897–1997) had a son, Kenneth Donald Wakefield Jr.[5] In 1942, they had a daughter, Mary Jane Wakefield.[6]

In 1930, she and her husband bought a tourist lodge (the Toll House Inn) in Whitman 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. People from across the region visited the Toll House, including notables such as US Ambassador Joseph Kennedy, Sr.[7] Her chocolate chip cookies soon became very popular.[8][9] She invented chocolate chip cookies around 1938.[10]

It is said that Wakefield was inspired by a trip to Egypt when she started to experiment with cookie recipes. Her assistant Sue Brides was experimenting with pecan drop cookies.[11] Wakefield found the conventional cookie recipe of half white sugar to half brown sugar to be inspired but she still attempted to improve on the recipe.

Ruth Wakefield invented the chocolate chip cookie. She added chopped up bits from a Nestlé semi-sweet chocolate bar into a cookie.[12] It is often incorrectly reported that the cookie was an accident and that Wakefield expected the chocolate chunks to melt making chocolate cookies. In reality, Wakefield stated that she deliberately invented the cookie. She said, "We had been serving a thin butterscotch nut cookie with ice cream. Everybody seemed to love it, but I was trying to give them something different. So I came up with Toll House cookie."[13]

Wakefield wrote a best selling cookbook, Toll House Tried and True Recipes,[14] that went through 39 printings.[15] The 1938 edition of the cookbook was the first to include the recipe for a chocolate chip cookie, the "Toll House Chocolate Crunch Cookie".[13]

During WWII, US soldiers from Massachusetts who were stationed overseas shared the cookies they received in care packages from back home with soldiers from other parts of the US. Soon after, hundreds of soldiers were writing home asking their families to send them some Toll House cookies, and Wakefield was soon inundated with letters from around the world requesting her recipe. Thus began the nationwide craze for the chocolate chip cookie.[16][17]

As the popularity of the Toll House Chocolate Crunch Cookie increased, the sales of Nestlé's semi-sweet chocolate bars also spiked. Andrew Nestlé and Ruth Wakefield made a business arrangement: Wakefield gave Nestlé the right to use her cookie recipe and the Toll House name for one dollar and a lifetime supply of Nestlé chocolate.[18] Nestlé began marketing chocolate chips to be used especially for cookies and printing the recipe for the Toll House Cookie on its package.[19]

Chocolate chip cookies are still consumed today and currently exist in a market space of over $18 billion in the US.[20]

Wakefield died on January 10, 1977 following a long illness in Jordan Hospital in Plymouth, Massachusetts.[21]

Ruth Graves Wakefield was born in 1903 in Easton, Massachusetts. After attending school, she began teaching home economics at a local high school, and working as a dietitian at a hospital on the side. She went on to marry Kenneth Wakefield when she was 23. A few years later, they bought a house which they planned to turn into an inn. This small, 17th century house was on what would have been the toll road between two Massachusetts cities. Therefore, they called it the Toll House Inn. Given her background in home economics, Ruth created a menu for their new inn. Overtime, the Toll House Inn became more and more popular for Ruth’s cooking. As notoriety grew, Ruth wanted to give her customers a new dessert. Her pain point: give her customers something new and exciting. She had planned to melt Baker’s chocolate and mix it into the dough to create an all chocolate cookie. However, she realized she was out of Baker’s chocolate. Instead, she was forced to substitute a bar of Nestle’s semi-sweet chocolate that she received from her friend Andrew Nestle. She is said to have broken the bar up using an ice pick and mixed it into the dough. She thought that the cookie would still result in an all chocolate cookie once they baked and the chocolate melted. But, the chocolate did not absorb as she thought, and the first chocolate chip cookie was born! Obviously, the cookies became a hit! The Toll House Inn featured the cookie recipe in some of their ads, were featured in multiple newspapers, as well as Ruth’s own cookbook. Wakefield was also featured on a radio program hosted by Marjorie Husted, also known as “Betty Crocker”. Toll House Cookies were commonly added to care packages sent to American soldiers overseas, which helped to quickly boost their status amongst Americans. The recipe had gotten so much publicity, it caused the sales of Nestle chocolate bars to sky rocket. Andrew Nestle and Ruth Graves Wakefield came to an agreement to print the cookie recipe on the chocolate’s packaging. Part of the deal was that Nestle would supply Ruth with chocolate for the rest of her life! To accommodate the nation’s cookie bakers, Nestle began scoring their chocolate bars and selling them with a special chopper for easy cutting. However, as time went on, Nestle began making small chocolate morsels to eliminate the need for chopping all together. So not only did Ruth Graves Wakefield invent the chocolate chip cookie, but she also is the reason we have chocolate chips! Nestle still prints the Toll House Cookie recipe on all its chocolate, and sells refridgertated dough. The chocolate chip cookie is one of the most well-known and well-loved cookies out there. Hundreds of different recipes now exist as bakers put their own spin on Wakefield’s classic recipe, as well as many different companies who have released competitors to the Toll House Cookie. Chocolate chip cookies bring joy and comfort to people all over the world, and we have Ruth to thank. Wakefield passed away in 1977, but her baking legacy will live on forever.

• Ruth Graves Wakefield at Find a Grave