Editing Potato chips (section)

== History ==

The earliest known recipe for potato chips is in the English cook [[William Kitchiner]]'s book ''[[The Cook's Oracle (cookbook)|The Cook's Oracle]]'' published in 1817,<ref name="Berry"/> which was a bestseller in the United Kingdom and the United States.<ref>{{cite web | last=Magazine | first=Smithsonian | last2=Tensley | first2=Brandon | title=How the Potato Chip Took Over America | website=Smithsonian Magazine | date=6 January 2022 | url=https://www.smithsonianmag.com/arts-culture/curious-history-potato-chip-180979232/ | access-date=14 February 2025}}</ref> The 1822 edition's recipe for "Potatoes fried in Slices or Shavings" reads "peel large potatoes... cut them in shavings round and round, as you would peel a lemon; dry them well in a clean cloth, and fry them in lard or dripping".<ref name="Berry"/><ref name="William Kitchiner"/> An 1825 British book about French cookery calls them "Pommes de Terre frites" (second recipe) and calls for thin slices of potato fried in "clarified butter or goose dripping", drained and sprinkled with salt.<ref name="Boys"/> Early recipes for potato chips in the US are found in [[Mary Randolph]]'s ''Virginia House-Wife'' (1824)<ref name="Randolph"/> and in N.K.M. Lee's ''Cook's Own Book'' (1832),<ref name="Lee"/> both of which explicitly cite Kitchiner.<ref name="McWilliams"/>

A legend associates the creation of potato chips with [[Saratoga Springs, New York]], decades later than the first recorded recipe.<ref name="booktmp-2013"/> By the late nineteenth century, a popular version of the story attributed the dish to [[George Speck|George Crum]], a cook<ref name="fox"/><ref name="sfss-2003jul03"/> at [[Moon's Lake House]] who was trying to appease an unhappy customer on August 24, 1853.<ref name="Henley"/> The customer kept sending back his [[French fries|French-fried potatoes]], complaining that they were too thick,<ref name="inventor"/> too "soggy", or not salted enough. Frustrated, Crum sliced several potatoes extremely thin, fried them to a crisp, and seasoned them with extra salt. To his surprise, the customer loved them. They soon came to be called "Saratoga Chips",<ref name="Civil War"/> a name that persisted into the mid-twentieth century. A version of this story was popularized in a 1973 national advertising campaign by St. Regis Paper Company which manufactured packaging for chips, claiming that Crum's customer was [[Cornelius Vanderbilt]].<ref name="fox"/> Crum was already renowned as a chef at the time, and he owned a lakeside restaurant by 1860 which he called Crum's House.<ref name="fox"/> The "Saratoga Chips" brand name still exists today.