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Many cooks’ favorite recipes were the results of accidents, yet cases of low tips, customer complaints, and even food poisoning prove that many accidents with food don’t work. Here are some favorite foods that were actually mistakes.

Chocolate Chip Cookies

George Washington, Benjamin Franklin, Abraham Lincoln, and Mark Twain never tasted one. That is because they died before the chocolate cookie was invented. Thanks to Ruth Wakefield, chocolate chip cookies were invented in 1930 and are available all over America today. She didn’t plan to invent a cookie that would be the country’s favorite. Wakefield was busy with the chores of running the Toll House Inn, which is between Boston and New Bedford, Massachusetts. While mixing a batch of cookies, she found out that she was out of baker’s chocolate. As a substitute, she broke some sweetened chocolate into small pieces and added them to the cookie dough. Wakefield expected the chocolate to melt and the dough to absorb them, making chocolate cookies. When she took out the pan from the oven, she was surprised to see that the chocolate had not melted into the dough, and her cookies were not chocolate cookies. Wakefield had accidentally invented the chocolate chip cookie. They are named Toll House Cookies after Ruth Wakefield’s Inn and are the most popular variety of cookie in America today. The cookies are so popular that they even provide full-time jobs; some vendors sell nothing but chocolate chip cookies.

Ice Cream Cones

The Chinese made desserts thousands of years ut the ice cream cone wasn’t very noticed until after 1904. Some food vendors had stands near each other at the 1904 World’s Fair in St. Louis, Missouri. Ernist Hamwi, who had been in the United States one year, was selling Zalabia. Zalabia was a wafer-thin Persian waffle. Close to his stand, another vendor was selling ice cream. That summer in St. Louis was very hot, and the vendor next to Hamwi soon ran out of dishes to serve his ice cream in. Hamwi rolled one of his waffles into a cone shape and went over to the other vendor and topped it with a scoop of ice cream. The ice cream with the cone was a hit and the "World’s Fair Cornucopia," as it was called, became the ice cream cone.

While the story of Hamwi’s cone is usually accepted, another man thought a lot like him. An Italian named Italo Marchiony was running a pushcart business in New York City selling lemon ice in a cone. In the beginning he used a paper cone, after that, a pastry one. Italo even applied for a patent in September of 1903, and got it in December, which was six months before the St. Louis World’s Fair started.

Hamwi and Marchiony both had the idea for an ice cream cone. Yet it was probably the huge number of people who tasted Hanwi’s cones at the World’s Fair that made the cone a popular treat.

Potato Chips

We Americans spend about 4 that the potato chip was invented in 1853 in Saratoga Springs, New York, by accident. The Carey Moon Lake House in Saratoga Springs was a popular vacation spot for the wealthy people of the area. A Native American chef named George Crum worked in the kitchen there. 

One day a customer sent back his plate of potatoes several times. He kept asking that the potatoes be cut thinner and fried longer. Crum had a bad temper, and decided to get even with the customer. He sliced the potatoes very thin, fried them until they were crisps, and salted them. Crum was sure the guest would hate them. Crum had the potatoes delivered back to the table and much to everyone’s surprise the customer was very happy and asked for more. The news spread fast about these crispy potatoes and until the 1900’s they were known as Saratoga chips, named after the town where they were introduced. Today more than 816 million pounds of potato chips are eaten in the United States each year. Potato chips are America’s number one snack food.

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