Who is credited with inventing the chocolate chip cookie in 1938?

Ruth Graves Wakefield is credited with inventing the chocolate chip cookie in 1938.

Wakefield was a chef, dietitian and co-owner of the Toll House Inn in Whitman, Massachusetts. In 1938, she created the recipe later known as the Toll House chocolate crunch cookie by adding chopped pieces of Nestlé semi-sweet chocolate to a cookie dough. The pieces stayed distinct during baking instead of melting throughout the dough, creating the characteristic chocolate-chip texture.

The recipe appeared in the 1938 edition of Wakefield’s cookbook, Toll House Tried and True Recipes. Its popularity helped lead to a 1939 agreement with Nestlé to print the recipe on chocolate packaging. Nestlé later sold chocolate in small morsels, helping standardize the ingredient now associated with the cookie.

The often-repeated story that the cookie was an accidental invention is disputed. Wakefield later described deliberately developing something different from the inn’s existing butterscotch-nut cookie. Earlier American cookies containing grated or melted chocolate existed, so “invented” means she is credited with creating the modern chocolate-chip style, not every earlier chocolate cookie.