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George Speck, also called George Crum was born on July 15, 1824 in Saratoga County in upstate New York. The son of an Af...
05/15/2024

George Speck, also called George Crum was born on July 15, 1824 in Saratoga County in upstate New York. The son of an African-American father and a Native American mother, Crum was working as the chef in the summer of 1853 when he incidentally invented the chip.

In the summer of 1853, George Crum was employed as a chef at an elegant resort in Saratoga Springs, New York. On Moon Lake Lodge’s restaurant menu were French-fried potatoes, prepared by Crum in the standard, thick-cut French style that was popularized in 1700s France and enjoyed by Thomas Jefferson as ambassador to that country. Ever since Jefferson brought the recipe to America and served French fries to guests at Monticello, the dish was popular and serious dinner fare.

At Moon Lake Lodge, one dinner guest found chef Crum’s French fries too thick for his liking and rejected the order. Crum cut and fried a thinner batch, but these, too, met with disapproval. Exasperated, Crum decided to rile the guest by producing French fries too thin and crisp to skewer with a fork. The plan backfired. The guest was ecstatic over the browned, paper-thin potatoes, and other diners requested Crum’s potato chips, which began to appear on the menu as Saratoga Chips, a house specialty.

A home economics class in Washington D.C. circa 1899. Johnston, Frances BenjaminScientific ideas around food have always...
05/15/2024

A home economics class in Washington D.C. circa 1899. Johnston, Frances Benjamin
Scientific ideas around food have always existed, but in the late 1800s, people began to prioritize invisible components of food learning, such as how to avoid illnesses like scurvy, beriberi and pellagra. Vegetables became a bit more important – albeit cooked for long periods of time.

A woman’s kitchen became her laboratory and her cookbooks were her study materials. What was thought of as “nutrition” was incredibly important and yet women couldn’t learn how to cook from Mom, nor did they want to.

“The idea was that you shouldn’t just do everything the way your mother did because that was, first of all, drudgery,” says Laura Shapiro, an historian who writes about women and food. “It was really hard work and it wasn’t modern.”





Historians hold up "American Cookery" by Amelia Simmons as the first real American cookbook, published in 1796. Flip thr...
05/15/2024

Historians hold up "American Cookery" by Amelia Simmons as the first real American cookbook, published in 1796. Flip through this one and more at the Michigan State University digital library. Jan Longone, Wine and Food Library
Up until the late 1800s, people preferred to eat the foods that filled them up. Dairy, meat, hominy, oatmeal and sugar were staples – vegetables, not so much. Vitamins wouldn’t be fully appreciated until the 20th century.

“They didn’t like spices because they think they created indigestion and were a distraction from the actual food,” says Freedman, who noted that spices were considered the “food of the poor.”





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