Is there a more comforting smell than that of chocolate chip cookies baking in the oven? It probably won’t surprise you to learn that the creator of the chocolate chip cookie was a woman, Ruth Graves Wakefield. What might surprise you to learn is how the happy accident that created the cookie and the name ‘Nestle Tollhouse Cookie’ came to be.

In the 1930’s cars traveling a great distance were required to stop and pay tolls at designated toll houses. These houses were often run by people who would also supply a bit of respite and a hot meal for weary travelers.

Ruth and her husband ran The Toll House Inn in Whitman, Massachusetts.  During one especially busy day, Ruth didn’t have time to melt the chocolate for her ‘chocolate dew drop cookies’, so she just broke the chocolate into chunks and stirred it into the batter. She assumed the chocolate would melt and spread throughout the cookie. When she took them out of the oven she realized her plan didn’t work, but since it was her only dessert she served them anyway.

To her surprise they were a smash hit, and soon travelers who stopped to pay their toll were requesting her cookies with the chocolate chunks in them. She wrote a cookbook that included the recipe, and during World War II soldiers from the east coast began receiving care packages from home with cookies made with Ruth’s recipe. Soon soldiers were writing home with requests that their mother’s send them cookies with the chocolate chunks in them, and Ruth’s recipe became a national phenomenon.

The Nestle company noticed a spike in their sales on the east coast and after investigating, discovered it was due to Ruth’s recipe for her cookies. They contacted Ruth and struck a deal with her that gave them the rights to the recipe for one dollar. All Ruth asked in return was that the chocolate bars be scored so they were easier to break and that they give her a lifetime supply of chocolate, which they did.

In time Nestle would invent chocolate chips, making it even easier to make Ruth’s cookies. They would also print her recipe on the back of every package, renaming them ‘Tollhouse Cookies’ in honor of Ruth and the place they were invented.

So the next time you’re breathing in the intoxicating smells of chocolate chip cookies in the oven, or biting into their warm, chewy goodness, remember to thank a woman….thank Ruth Graves Wakefield.