Crisps were invented

Princely Sums

Today is either one of the greatest days in the whole of human evolution, or it isn’t. I’ll explain. It is rumoured that on this particular day in 1853, a very picky customer entered Moon’s Lake House restaurant in Saratoga New York and ordered fried potatoes. The spuds he was served were far too thick for his tastes so he kept sending them back. An infuriated cook called George Crum eventually cut them wafer thin, dumped them in hot oil until they were hard and crispy and then salted them heavily, thinking them inedible.

Of course, the customer loved them and the crisp was born.Except that some, or all, of the story is apocryphal. Even though there were recipes for very similar foodstuffs knocking about in the early 1800s, the legend of George and his ‘Saratoga Chips’ took hold. It was even expanded so soon it was business magnate Cornelius Vanderbilt who was ordering and rejecting the potatoes. No matter what the actual story was, we can all be delighted that someone actually bothered inventing them and that they are delicious. Especially cheese and onion ones.