Toll House Inn
History
Contrary to its name and the sign, which still stands despite the building having burned down in 1984, the site was never a toll house, and it was built in 1817, not 1709. The use of "toll house" and "1709" was a marketing strategy.
Ruth Wakefield cooked all the food served and soon gained local fame for her desserts. According to early accounts, Wakefield created the first chocolate chip cookie using a bar of semi-sweet chocolate made by Nestlé while adapting her butter drop dough cookie recipe. In 1938, Wakefield and her assistant, Sue Brides, used chocolate after wanting to "do something a little more interesting with" their already popular butterscotch nut cookie.
The new dessert soon became very popular. Wakefield contacted Nestlé and they struck a deal: the company would print her recipe on the cover of all their semi-sweet chocolate bars, and she would get a lifetime supply of chocolate. Nestlé began marketing chocolate chips to be used especially for cookies. Wakefield wrote a cookbook, Toll House Tried and True Recipes, that went through 39 printings.
Wakefield died in 1977, and the Toll House Inn burned down from a fire that started in the kitchen on New Year's Eve 1984. The inn was not rebuilt. The site, at 362 Bedford Street, is marked with a historical marker and mounted restored sign. Although there are many manufacturers of chocolate chips today, Nestlé still publishes Wakefield's recipe on the back of each package of Toll House Morsels.
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Toll House Inn Restaurant, Route 18, Whitman, Massachusetts, prior to destruction in 1984 fire
References
- ^ Toll The Original Chocolate Chip Cookie Archived 2021-08-08 at the Wayback Machine by Aimee Tucker on New England Today Food, March 26, 2020
- ^ "Classic cookie creators". South Shore Living. SS living. Nov 2011. Archived from the original on 2013-10-05..
- ^ "Toll House Cookie History – Invention of Toll House Cookies". Idea finder. Archived from the original on 2009-03-17. Retrieved 2009-07-30.
- ^ "The Nestlé Toll House Story". Very Best Baking. Archived from the original on 2015-09-05. Retrieved 2015-09-21.
- ^ "Ruth Wakefield: Chocolate Chip Cookie Inventor". Women Inventors. Archived from the original on 2020-11-06. Retrieved 2009-07-30.
- ^ "Inventor of the Week Archive: Chocolate Chip Cookie". Massachusetts Institute of Technology. Archived from the original on 2003-04-03. Retrieved 2009-08-01.
- ^ "Baker's daughter reveals 'real recipe' for Toll House chocolate chip cookies". WCVB5. June 21, 2017. Archived from the original on 2017-12-27. Retrieved 2021-09-30.
- ^ Stack, James (January 6, 1985). "A landmark burns". The Boston Globe..
- ^ Fontes, Kristina. "A Taste of Old Colony History: Bake historical recipes with Old Colony History Museum". Taunton Daily Gazette. Archived from the original on 2023-10-29. Retrieved 2023-10-18.
- ^ "Nestle Toll House Chocolate Chip Cookies - Recipe File". Cooking For Engineersaccess-date=2018-05-26. Archived from the original on 2017-10-07. Retrieved 2017-10-06.