Good afternoon! Today is Chocolate Chip Day, so I took the show today to give you some fun facts and some history on the chocolate chip! DaysoftheYear.com says that the best way to eat chocolate chips is by the handful, straight out of the bag, and I’m pretty inclined to agree with that statement.
Since today was Mystery Monday, we had a chocolate chip related Mystery Question!
My question was: “Who is credited with the invention of the chocolate chip?”
Congrats to Olivia of Mt. Vernon, who correctly answered our question!
The correct answer was Ruth Graves Wakefield!
Check out some of the fun facts and history that I talked about on the show today below!
It all started at a little place you may recognize the name of, the Toll House Inn. Located in Whitman, Massachusetts, it just happens to be the home of that most favorite of cookies, the chocolate chip cookie. Ruth Graves Wakefield had originally planned on making a chocolate cookie, and decided to do so by throwing in chunks of a chocolate bar into it. In a happy accident, it turned out that the chocolate did not melt and mix with the rest of the cookie, but maintained its shape, filling the cookie with delicious little chocolate bits.
But it didn’t immediately go from chocolate bar to chocolate chip, there was a little innovation that happened in between first. Based off of the success of the cookies she made, Nestle agreed to add Ms. Wakefield’s recipe to their wrapper. What did they pay her for this honor? A lifetime supply of chocolate! Sounds like an awesome deal to us too! Nestle (and at least one other company) went on to include a chopping tool to help prepare the bars for use in cookies. That is, right up until 1941 when they started selling them as ‘chocolate chips’ or ‘chocolate morsels’.
DID YOU KNOW?
- The chips melt best at temperatures between 104 and 113 °F (40 and 45 °C). The melting process starts at around 90 °F when the cocoa butter in the chips starts to heat. The cooking temperature must never exceed 115 °F (for milk and white) or 120 °F (for dark) or the chocolate will burn.
- Today, chocolate chips are very popular as a baking ingredient in the United States and the chocolate chip cookie is regarded as a quintessential American dessert.
- Chocolate chips are also available in Europe, Australia, and other parts of the world. Nestlé and The Hershey Company are among the top producers of chocolate chips.
- In 1987 Chester Soling sponsored a contest to find the best recipe for chocolate chip cookies and got over 2.600 responses for various recipes.
Our word of the day today was peregrinate.
verb || PAIR-uh-gruh-nayt
This means to travel especially on foot, or to walk or travel over.We begin our narrative of the linguistic travels of peregrinate with the Latin word peregrinatus, the past participle of peregrinari, which means “to travel in foreign lands.” The verb is derived from the Latin word for “foreigner,” peregrinus, which was earlier used as an adjective meaning “foreign.”That term also gave us the words pilgrim and peregrine, the latter of which once meant “alien” but is now used as an adjective meaning “tending to wander” and as a noun naming a kind of falcon. (The peregrine falcon is so named because it was traditionally captured during its first flight—or pilgrimage—from the nest).
Thanks for listening!
-Lilly
Driving Notes 