National Potato Chip Day on March 14th celebrates America’s #1 snack food. Millions will enjoy their favorite chip this holiday. It’s a good thing there are so many to choose from, too!
- On August 24, 1853, an unhappy restaurant customer kept sending his potatoes back to the kitchen, complaining they were thick and soggy. Chef George Crum decided to slice the potatoes as thin as possible, frying them until crisp and added extra salt. To the chef’s surprise, the customer loved them. The crispy potatoes soon became a regular item on the restaurant’s menu under the name of “Saratoga Chips.”
- Crum from there opened his own restaurant and many famous people such as William Vanderbilt, Cornelius Vanderbilt, and Jay Gould visited his restaurant, with a basket of chips at every table.
- Although Crum didn’t patent his invention, it came to pass as one of the most innovative snacks to move the food industry. Many from there began their own food production, including the Hanover Home Potato Chip company established in 1921.
- In 1953, Laura Scudder came up with the concept of putting the chips in wax paper bags instead of putting them in glass containers or barrels.
- In 1938, Herman Lay founded Lay’s in Nashville and his potato chips became the first national brand to sell potato chips successful on a wide scale
- In 1944 Lay’s became the first snack food manufacturer to purchase television commercials, with Bert Lahr as a celebrity spokesman
- Other explanations point for the existence of the potato chip point to recipes in Shilling Cookery for the People by Alexis Soyer (1845) or Mary Randolph’s The Virginia House-Wife (1824). While many references between these dates sliced potatoes and fried them in grease, uncertainty remains whether the potatoes were fried to a crisp.
- However, by the late 1870s, menus across the country used the term “Saratoga Chips” on train cars, hotel restaurants, and street carts.
- The name carried into grocers when bakeries made the chips in larger batches. They shipped them by wagon to the restaurants and grocers by the barrel. The grocers sold them to private families by the pound. Folks were instructed to bake the chips in a hot oven for a few minutes, and the chips would be as crisp as if fried that same day.
- The Dayton, Ohio-based Mike-sell’s Potato Chip Company, founded in 1910, calls itself the “oldest potato chip company in the United States.” New England-based Tri-Sum Potato Chips, originally established in 1908 as the Leominster Potato Chip Company, in Leominster, Massachusetts, claims to be America’s first potato chip manufacturer.
- Flavored chips were introduced in the 1950s. Potato Chip revenues are over $15 billion a year worldwide!
- The average potato chip is .04 to.08 of an inch thick.
- During WWII production of potato chips halted because they were deemed an “unessential food”
- in Great Britain and many other parts of the world Potato Chips are referred to as “crisps”. Chips, to them, are French Fried potatoes.
- It takes 1,000 pounds of potatoes to make 350 pounds of potato chips.
- The most popular US Potato Chip flavors are Regular, Barbecue and Sour Cream and Onion.
- Potato chips are American’s favorite snack food.
- Americans eat about 1.85 billion pounds of potato chips or about 6.6 pounds per person annually.
- When the United States entered World War II, potato chips were declared a “nonessential food” that had to halt production immediately.
- Potato chip bags are only partially filled for a reason: The additional space adds cushioning to prevent breakage.
- The sound of crunching adds to the pleasure of eating chips. Snackers who eat chips with headphones on report becoming bored with chips more quickly.
- Roughly 28,000,000 pounds (13,000,000 kg) of chips are eaten during the Super Bowl.
- Pennsylvania is known as the “Potato Chip Capital” of the world and leads the United States in potato chip production.
- Pringles are not potato chips. A high court ruled that because Pringles are made from dough, they are more like a biscuit or cake.
- You would get a larger dose of radiation from eating a bag of potato chips every day than you would if you lived next to a nuclear power plant. – Source
- 70 percent of all potatoes grown in Michigan, become potato chips, making them the No. 1 state for chipping production. – Source
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