Speaker 1: Welcome to Stuff You Missed in History Class, a production
Speaker 1: of I Heart Radio. Hello, and welcome to the podcast.
Speaker 1: I'm Holly Fry, and I'm Tracy B. Wilson. Tracy Happenstance
Speaker 1: has been on my mind a lot lately for a
Speaker 1: variety of reasons. Things that are coincidental or um the
Speaker 1: people accidentally have fallen into good fortune have just come
Speaker 1: up in lots of conversations lately for no particular reason
Speaker 1: I can discern um. And I have also had a
Speaker 1: list brewing for a while of topics that are kind
Speaker 1: of happy accidents, and so uh, it seemed like maybe
Speaker 1: the universe was conspiring to tell me to look at
Speaker 1: that list again. One category of those happy accidents that
Speaker 1: I have on my list is accidental inventions. So we're
Speaker 1: going to talk about a couple of those today. Here's
Speaker 1: my true confession upfront. I had planned to make this
Speaker 1: three accidental inventions, but the two that we're covering today,
Speaker 1: as I was researching, got too big, and so another
Speaker 1: got cut. But that means that probably another installment or
Speaker 1: two of of accidental inventions happened on the road, and
Speaker 1: a wonderful confluence of happy accidents see it's all about UH,
Speaker 1: accidents and happiness. Both of these accidental inventions, although one
Speaker 1: might not have been an accident we'll talk about that
Speaker 1: have to do with cooking and food. So first we'll
Speaker 1: have a main course if you will UH and if
Speaker 1: you're nice and flexible in that definition, and then a
Speaker 1: dessert but has a little bitterness to be how you
Speaker 1: look at it. You will see what I mean when
Speaker 1: we get there. So today we're covering two accidental inventions.
Speaker 1: We'll start with a very very common household appliance. Microwaves
Speaker 1: are high frequency electromagnetic waves, and as it turns out,
Speaker 1: you can use them to cook food. Here's a very
Speaker 1: quick and simple explanation of how that works. If you
Speaker 1: put food in an electromagnetic field, the fats and water
Speaker 1: and other elements of the food will absorb those waves
Speaker 1: and then start to vibrate. They're excited to a point
Speaker 1: of hyperactivity, and they vibrate so much that it produces
Speaker 1: heat within the food itself. That's a faster way to
Speaker 1: cook things than when the heat is coming from an
Speaker 1: external source like an oven. Right, So usually you'll see
Speaker 1: people say that it's UH fats, waters and sugars that
Speaker 1: are the primary drivers of that heat. Just as an aside,
Speaker 1: I wanted to get this out there because I bet
Speaker 1: people are like ready to dash off a listener mail.
Speaker 1: If you have heard that cooking with a microwave destroys
Speaker 1: food nutrients, that is a myth because the cooking time
Speaker 1: is so reduced, nothing is ever cooked long enough for
Speaker 1: the microwave radiation to actually destroy any nutrients. And you're
Speaker 1: also not using any additional water like you might if
Speaker 1: you were boiling something to cook it, so no nutrients
Speaker 1: are leaching out into the cooking substance like a water
Speaker 1: at all, just stays right there. You're fine. Uh. When
Speaker 1: I was in massage school, one of my massage school
Speaker 1: classmates insisted that one should not cook with the microwave
Speaker 1: because microwaves made all the molecules in the food you
Speaker 1: were cooking spin backwards. And yeah, I've heard lots of
Speaker 1: similar myths. We had an argument about that on like
Speaker 1: last day of massage school. Even though that is not true.
Speaker 1: You can get uneven cooking with a microwave when you're
Speaker 1: heating something up that has different ingredients with different moisture content,
Speaker 1: and that's why you'll sometimes take something out find that
Speaker 1: part of it is still cool, presumably a drier part
Speaker 1: like the crust, and then another part is blazing hot
Speaker 1: like a filling. Of course, that means you can't really
Speaker 1: get something crispy on the outside either. Crisping sleeves help,
Speaker 1: but you're not gonna make fried chicken in a microwave.
Speaker 1: That's what's up um. This year, while we're recording this two,
Speaker 1: will be the fifty fifth anniversary of what's usually called
Speaker 1: the first home microwave oven. Uh, there's actually a precursor,
Speaker 1: but that's the one that gets all the credit. That
Speaker 1: was introduced to the market by manufacturer Amana. But that
Speaker 1: wasn't the first microwave oven, even though it was the
Speaker 1: first successful consumer one. Industrial kitchens started using them in
Speaker 1: the nineteen fifties, well before the nine seven debut of
Speaker 1: Amana's home use radar range. All of this is older
Speaker 1: than I thought, because my households first microwave was much
Speaker 1: later than that. Oh, I have plans to ask you
Speaker 1: all about it, Okay, in our behind the scenes so
Speaker 1: radar as you may recall the text objects by sending
Speaker 1: radio waves and then identifying objects when the waves bounce
Speaker 1: back from the surface. Of those objects. Radar was first
Speaker 1: used to create a detection system by physicist Sir Robert
Speaker 1: Watson watt In and radar systems require magnature wants to
Speaker 1: produce all those radio waves. So during World War Two,
Speaker 1: the military needed magnetrons. They needed a lot of magnetrons.
Speaker 1: They needed more magnetrons than they could possibly get their
Speaker 1: hands on. Yes, you will sometimes see this contract as
Speaker 1: happening that we're about to talk about coming from the
Speaker 1: US military or from the British military. I think after
Speaker 1: reading a bunch of different versions of it, what had
Speaker 1: happened was the British military was kind of asking the
Speaker 1: US to help them as well, and that's how it
Speaker 1: kind of gets confused there of who actually wanted to
Speaker 1: contract this company called Raytheon, and there was an engineer
Speaker 1: named Percy LeBaron Spencer. Spencer was born in eight in Howland, Maine,
Speaker 1: and his early years were really marked by pretty extreme poverty. Uh.
Speaker 1: He started working when he was still just a kid,
Speaker 1: taking a job at a weaving mill at age twelve,
Speaker 1: because he had to take care of himself and his
Speaker 1: aunt who was raising him at the time. He was
Speaker 1: a very very smart kid, just a couple of years later. So,
Speaker 1: when he was still a pretty teenager, Percy, who had
Speaker 1: no formal education past grammar school, taught himself everything that
Speaker 1: he could about electrical wiring so he could apply for
Speaker 1: a job at a paper plant that needed someone to
Speaker 1: wire the entire factory for electricity. And he got that
Speaker 1: job and did it. In nineteen twelve, at the age
Speaker 1: of eighteen, Spencer joined the Navy as a radio operator,
Speaker 1: and he devoured all the information he could about radio technology.
Speaker 1: And he didn't stop there. He was curious about almost everything,
Speaker 1: it seems, and he continued to be an autodiet act.
Speaker 1: He taught himself calculus, chemistry, physics, and even metallurgy. He
Speaker 1: did all of that from books. Later on in life
Speaker 1: he said, quote, I just got hold of a lot
Speaker 1: of textbooks and taught myself while I was standing watch
Speaker 1: at night. I have such admiration for him. Uh. The
Speaker 1: World War One had ended and Percy Spencer had fulfilled
Speaker 1: his enlistment contract. He took a job with a new company,
Speaker 1: the American Appliance Company, in Cambridge, Massachusetts, in the late
Speaker 1: ninety twenties. The company went through several reorganizations and a
Speaker 1: reincorporation and it became Raytheon Manufacturing Company. Raytheon in partnership
Speaker 1: with M I. T. That allowed the company to use
Speaker 1: the school's radiation laboratory. Got this government contract to build
Speaker 1: magnetrons pretty early in World War Two, and Spencer got
Speaker 1: to work and he did innovate magnatron production. He developed
Speaker 1: a way to cut pieces needed for assembly from sheet
Speaker 1: metal instead of needing every single component to be made separately,
Speaker 1: and he kept working with the magnetrons that Raytheon produced
Speaker 1: to work on improving them and expanding their uses. Raytheon
Speaker 1: ended up developing a shipboard radar system and producing about
Speaker 1: eighty percent of the magnetrons that were used by the Allies.
Speaker 1: But the expansion into cooking was really an accident. Yeah,
Speaker 1: they were a defense contractors. They were not like and food.
Speaker 1: So the story goes that one day at work, Spencer
Speaker 1: had a candy bar in his pocket that was a
Speaker 1: peanut cluster according to his grandson, because he used to
Speaker 1: break up the nuts and feed them to squirrels and
Speaker 1: chipmunks during his lynches. And after working near a live
Speaker 1: magnetron with this candy bar in his pocket, he noticed
Speaker 1: that it had gotten a bit melty. He had not
Speaker 1: been near a heat source, so he suspected that the
Speaker 1: magnetron and its radio waves might have had something to
Speaker 1: do with it. So he got to work and did
Speaker 1: some testing. The first thing that Spencer purposely targeted with
Speaker 1: the radio waves was an egg, and after just a
Speaker 1: brief exposure, the egg exploded. Next, he tested corn kernels,
Speaker 1: so that's right. He basically made microwave popcorn. After some
Speaker 1: additional testing and refinement of magnetron's them for cooking food
Speaker 1: instead of producing radar, Spencer filed for a patent for
Speaker 1: what he called method of Treating food Stuffs. That opens
Speaker 1: with quote, my present invention relates to the treatment of
Speaker 1: food stuffs and more particularly to the cooking thereof through
Speaker 1: the use of electromagnetic energy. Yeah, if you look at
Speaker 1: this story, depending on your source, some people will say
Speaker 1: the popcorn came first. His grandson did a recent interview
Speaker 1: last year with Popular Mechanics and he said the egg
Speaker 1: was the first thing. People's memories are sieves could go
Speaker 1: either way, right, so uh. In this patent application, Spencer
Speaker 1: goes on to describe all of the various parts needed
Speaker 1: for the device and how they function together. And then
Speaker 1: touts quote, with the system described, I have found that
Speaker 1: an egg may be rendered hard boiled with the expenditure
Speaker 1: of two kilowatts per second. This compares with an expenditure
Speaker 1: of thirty six kilowatts per second to conventionally cook the
Speaker 1: same I have all so found that with my system,
Speaker 1: a potato requires the expenditure of about two hundred forty
Speaker 1: kilowats per second, when compared with the seventy two thousand
Speaker 1: kilowat seconds necessary to bake the same in an electric oven.
Speaker 1: These examples are, it is to be clearly understood merely illustrative.
Speaker 1: I have observed similar results with other food stuffs. In
Speaker 1: each instance, where the wavelength of the energy is of
Speaker 1: the order of the average dimension of the food stuff
Speaker 1: to be cooked, the process is very efficient, requiring the
Speaker 1: expenditure of a minimum amount of energy for a minimum
Speaker 1: amount of time. He also indicates that cooks will no
Speaker 1: doubt find many uses for his invention, writing quote, other
Speaker 1: objects and advantages of my present invention will readily occur
Speaker 1: to those skilled in the art to which the same relates.
Speaker 1: The patent request was submitted on October and was granted
Speaker 1: as Patent number two four nine five four to nine
Speaker 1: on January nine fifty. But even before the patent was
Speaker 1: officially awarded, Raytheon had started working on microwave ovens, and
Speaker 1: the first was the commercial Radar Range, which was named
Speaker 1: via an employee contest. This was first demonstrated in a
Speaker 1: Boston restaurant got the chance to use one as a test.
Speaker 1: Was the size of a refrigerator, and depending on specific features,
Speaker 1: that costs between two thousand and three thousand dollars. It's
Speaker 1: a lot of money. In a moment, we were going
Speaker 1: to talk about how that behemoth machine was followed by
Speaker 1: smaller models and how the microwave became a household standard,
Speaker 1: but first we will pause for a sponsor break. Thanks
Speaker 1: to the commercial microwave oven, it was soon on the
Speaker 1: minds of many engineers at manufacturing companies that a smaller
Speaker 1: version of the radar Range or a similar device could
Speaker 1: be marketed for home use. Raytheon partnered with Tappen Stove
Speaker 1: Company in nineteen fifty two to produce a reduced sized model,
Speaker 1: and they had one available to consumers in nineteen fifty five.
Speaker 1: This is that precursor I mentioned earlier, but it was
Speaker 1: twelve hundred to thirteen hundred dollars depending on the source
Speaker 1: you look at, far outside the budget of most homes.
Speaker 1: We always caveat that converting currency through time is a
Speaker 1: tricky and inaccurate thing. But I looked at several different
Speaker 1: inflation calculators. They all quoted an equivalency of more than
Speaker 1: twelve thousand dollars in current currency, some quite close to
Speaker 1: thirteen thousand. So, needless to say, the tap and radar
Speaker 1: range really did not catch on. In nineteen sixty five,
Speaker 1: Raytheon acquired a company called a Manner Refrigeration, Inc. At
Speaker 1: the time, they made, as the name suggests, refrigerators as
Speaker 1: well as air conditioners, and the company had already started
Speaker 1: working on commercial and industrial microwave ovens. Under Raytheon, the
Speaker 1: company expanded to include a consumer division, and this meant
Speaker 1: that not only was a Manna already working on a
Speaker 1: home microwave, but it already had a consumer distribution process
Speaker 1: that made it easy to get to market once all
Speaker 1: the engineering and design were perfected. As we mentioned a
Speaker 1: moment ago, the first consumer model, the r R one
Speaker 1: radar range, became available in nine That was a one
Speaker 1: volt countertop model that cost a little less than five
Speaker 1: hundred dollars, so still very much a luxury item, but
Speaker 1: much less expensive than that earlier attempt. It had a
Speaker 1: start button and a timer, obviously not digital, and it
Speaker 1: did not have a stop or cancel button. You just
Speaker 1: had to open it to stop it. The following year,
Speaker 1: a new model appeared with a stop button and a
Speaker 1: timer that allowed for up to thirty minutes of cooking.
Speaker 1: That was an addition of five minutes from how long
Speaker 1: the first model would have allowed. The reliability and the
Speaker 1: lower cost of the Amana radar range compared to it's
Speaker 1: it's briefly run predecessor made it very popular, very quickly.
Speaker 1: By the middle of the nineteen seventies, it was estimated
Speaker 1: that one million microwaves were being sold annually, and we
Speaker 1: really cannot overstate how much of a sensation this was.
Speaker 1: It was reported in papers regularly. In December of nineteen
Speaker 1: sixty eight, the daily Memphis Tennessee paper, The Commercial Appeal,
Speaker 1: ran an article about microwave ovens that featured a huge
Speaker 1: photograph of the first Memphis woman to have one. She
Speaker 1: is referenced as Mrs Ralph ur Sneed. We don't know
Speaker 1: what her first name was, and even the delivery man. J. L.
Speaker 1: Jetting of Jetting Appliances gets a shout out for this
Speaker 1: momentous occasion. Yeah, there's a very cute like the delivery
Speaker 1: man standing there having handed it off, and she's already
Speaker 1: starting to put something in it. Like I'm like, are
Speaker 1: you cooking for the delivery man? I don't know, but
Speaker 1: it's what seemed very exciting for everyone involved. This article
Speaker 1: goes on to list the details and capabilities of this
Speaker 1: quote cooking method of tomorrow. And some of these I
Speaker 1: found extraordinarily charming because when you look at them through
Speaker 1: today's lens, they're quite witty. So I'm going to read
Speaker 1: them off. It gave it a bulleted list. So number one,
Speaker 1: the microwave oven is priced under five hundred dollars to
Speaker 1: it operates on a hundred and fifteen volts. Just plug
Speaker 1: it in. Three it brown's meat, will cook anything. Four
Speaker 1: it saves seventy cooking time. Five it saves on the
Speaker 1: fuel bill. It uses less electricity than an ordinary frying pan.
Speaker 1: Six it saves on the food bill. Seven it produces
Speaker 1: a much cooler kitchen, no heat whatsoever. Eight foods actually
Speaker 1: taste better for natural juices are retained and not lost. Okay,
Speaker 1: most people would probably agree that the microwave is not
Speaker 1: really the best way to took most meals, and whether
Speaker 1: they taste better or not depends a lot on exactly
Speaker 1: what you are cooking. But you can see how the
Speaker 1: idea of a more efficient kitchen that is not swelteringly
Speaker 1: hot would have a huge appeal and also feel legitimately revolutionary.
Speaker 1: One of the funnier attributes of the microwave mentioned in
Speaker 1: that particular article is portability. There's this suggestion that you
Speaker 1: can take it out on the patio or even into
Speaker 1: your living room to cook if you wanted. That cracked
Speaker 1: me up so much when I was reading it, like
Speaker 1: just picturing putting a meal in the microwave, as I
Speaker 1: said on the couch, I don't know, I don't know.
Speaker 1: It just made me crack up. Um. The Honolulu Star
Speaker 1: Bulletin ran an article of its own in December nine
Speaker 1: under the headline microwave ovens put the space age in
Speaker 1: the kitchen and it offers, in addition to the article itself,
Speaker 1: a pictorial on just how fast you can make cake
Speaker 1: in a cup. It shows a user setting the time.
Speaker 1: It's like this four part developmental chronological pictures thing, So
Speaker 1: it shows the user setting the time like a close
Speaker 1: up on the hands, and then how the cake looks
Speaker 1: at ten seconds and twenty seconds, and then tenda done
Speaker 1: at thirty seconds. The paper's food editor, Betsy Ballsley tells
Speaker 1: readers quote, I recently spent a weekend using a radar
Speaker 1: range for all of the baking and roasting I normally
Speaker 1: would do in the oven of my stove. It was
Speaker 1: a fascinating experience. Fascinating is a good choice of words there.
Speaker 1: It's not really committing to whether roasting something in the
Speaker 1: microwave worked out. Betsy, though, gives a really truthful account
Speaker 1: of for learning curve at first overcooking everything because she
Speaker 1: couldn't adjust to the speed. But she claimed that by Sunday,
Speaker 1: her third day using the microwave, she'd gotten the hang
Speaker 1: of it and even cooked a turkey quote to perfection
Speaker 1: in an hour and fifteen minutes. So that's a lot
Speaker 1: quicker than the four hours that would have taken in
Speaker 1: the oven. I still have questions about how me too.
Speaker 1: She's honest that anything that needs leavening is just not
Speaker 1: gonna work, but that vegetables convenience foods and leftovers all
Speaker 1: come out perfectly. Yeah, she's pretty balanced in her thing
Speaker 1: of like. I mean, she says that turkey was great,
Speaker 1: and she cooked a roast in there, like she did
Speaker 1: a lot of meats which I would not usually cook
Speaker 1: large meat entredes in a microwave, but she claims it
Speaker 1: went quite well. Um. These two write ups and many
Speaker 1: others like them, Alright, we're talking about them because they
Speaker 1: showed just how excited people were to have an entirely
Speaker 1: new way of cooking, and one that seemed completely futuristic
Speaker 1: and almost unreal in its speed. The word microwave dates
Speaker 1: back to nineteen thirty one. It was used to describe
Speaker 1: the short waves that are kind of at the heart
Speaker 1: of this whole story in its technology, and it was
Speaker 1: used to describe the appliance itself right from when it
Speaker 1: was introduced. But this method of cooking changed things so
Speaker 1: much and so quickly that by nine seventy three, so
Speaker 1: just six years after the Amana radar range came out,
Speaker 1: the word microwave was being used as a verb. Safety
Speaker 1: regulations have been in place for consumer microwaves for decades,
Speaker 1: so for example, you could put your candy bar right
Speaker 1: next to your modern microwave while cooking something, and unlike
Speaker 1: Percy Spencer's experience, it will not melt unless your kitchen
Speaker 1: is incredibly hot, which is a situation I for sure
Speaker 1: had before. While the microwaves certainly won't replace the oven
Speaker 1: completely when it comes to making things like bread and pie,
Speaker 1: or the grill for things like burgers or steaks, it's
Speaker 1: just it's a everyday part of life for many people.
Speaker 1: I would say, every day a microwaves something, yeah, yeah,
Speaker 1: and Raytheon technology still exists, focused on aerospace and defense,
Speaker 1: although Amana is no longer part of the company. Amana
Speaker 1: was sold to Goodman Global in and then the company
Speaker 1: was split into its heating and cooling division, which Goodman retained,
Speaker 1: and its home appliance division, which was sold to Maytag
Speaker 1: in two thousand one. Whirlpool acquired Maytag in two thousand six,
Speaker 1: and a manner remains part of Whirlpool, still making a
Speaker 1: wide range of home appliances, including microwaves. Percy Spencer saw
Speaker 1: his inventions early success as a consumer product, but not
Speaker 1: how deeply it became a part of modern life. He
Speaker 1: died on September eight, nineteen sixty nine, which was two
Speaker 1: years after the amount of rador range had been introduced.
Speaker 1: And now we're moving on to our other invention, which
Speaker 1: is chocolate chip cookies. Who doesn't love cookies? Okay, I'm
Speaker 1: sure some people don't love cookies. I'm not going to judge.
Speaker 1: I don't get it, but that's fine. Um, But whether
Speaker 1: you like cookies or not, I think most folks were
Speaker 1: recognized that the chocolate chip cookie is one of the
Speaker 1: most popular bake treats to pop out of an oven,
Speaker 1: old school or even microwave. And like the microwave, they
Speaker 1: were invented accidentally. Maybe uh, there's actually so conflicting information here.
Speaker 1: But to talk about the rise of the chocolate chip cookie,
Speaker 1: we have to talk about the woman credited with inventing them,
Speaker 1: and that is Ruth Wakefield. That is someone we've gotten
Speaker 1: requests to talk about on the show before. I don't
Speaker 1: know if they would like how it goes. So. Ruth
Speaker 1: was born Ruth Graves and East Walpole, Massachusetts, on June
Speaker 1: se n oh three. She grew up in eastern Massachusetts
Speaker 1: with her parents, Fred Graves and Helen vest Jones Graves.
Speaker 1: She attended the precursor to Framingham State University which was
Speaker 1: Framingham State Normal School, Department of Household Arts. Graduated from
Speaker 1: there in nineteen Ruth had a number of jobs early
Speaker 1: in her adult life after she graduated. She taught high
Speaker 1: school economics, she worked as a dietitian in a hospital,
Speaker 1: and she even worked for a utility company and customer service.
Speaker 1: She managed their customer service team. But she eventually became
Speaker 1: an innkeeper. Really a restaurant tour that happened after she
Speaker 1: met Kenneth Wakefield and married him. Wakefield had worked in
Speaker 1: meat packing. He was an executive when they met, but
Speaker 1: the couple decided that they would like to run a
Speaker 1: restaurant together, so they bought a place in Whitman, Massachusetts,
Speaker 1: on Bedford Street, and they started there in in nineteen thirty.
Speaker 1: She had a very recognizable name, the toll House. In
Speaker 1: this house had a sign out front that read toll
Speaker 1: House in seventeen o nine, and you will see on
Speaker 1: occasion write ups that say that it was once used
Speaker 1: as a toll house and that it was built in
Speaker 1: the early eighteenth century. But that was apparently a quaint
Speaker 1: fiction that was cooked up by the Wakefields for marketing purposes.
Speaker 1: The house was really built by a man named Jacob
Speaker 1: Bates and his brother in law Lebas Smith in the
Speaker 1: eighteen teens. And it may have been on a toll road,
Speaker 1: doesn't appear to have actually been used as a toll house, right. Ah.
Speaker 1: That's you know, just just kind of adding to the mystique.
Speaker 1: This was to be very clear. I mean, you've probably
Speaker 1: already thought this a dicey time to open a restaurant.
Speaker 1: The Wall Street crash of had just happened, plunging the
Speaker 1: US into a depression. But according to Ruth, she and
Speaker 1: Ken had always noted the various disappointing things they had
Speaker 1: encountered when they went out for dinner, and they thought
Speaker 1: that they could do better. They basically had like the
Speaker 1: dream of the ideal restaurant their heads. So they bought
Speaker 1: this building. They renovated it, they burned through most of
Speaker 1: their investment money in the process. Ruth later said that
Speaker 1: they only had fifty dollars when they opened their doors
Speaker 1: to customers in August nine thirty, and after just a
Speaker 1: couple of days of serving only a handful of customers,
Speaker 1: that fifty dollars had dwindled in supply purchases and one
Speaker 1: really messy miscommunication where the Wakefields thought they had a
Speaker 1: large table of paying customers, and the woman who brought
Speaker 1: them believed that they had understood she was bringing her
Speaker 1: ladies group as a way to help them get the
Speaker 1: word out about their new business, and that it was
Speaker 1: going to be a compt affair. But within a few
Speaker 1: months it had all turned around. By Christmas, they needed
Speaker 1: to hire ten more employees in addition to the two
Speaker 1: they started with. By the end of the nineteen thirties,
Speaker 1: they had a hundred employees and the seven tables they'd
Speaker 1: started with had expanded to dozens. They had to add
Speaker 1: on to the building to accommodate this growing stream of
Speaker 1: regular customers. Many of those people that they were seeing
Speaker 1: were locals, but a lot were travelers. And for a dollar,
Speaker 1: diners got a full meal with whatever they desired with
Speaker 1: it from soup to dessert. If you wanted seconds, no
Speaker 1: extra charge. That was all part of your dollar. It
Speaker 1: was a pretty good deal. But it was also a
Speaker 1: very nice experience because Ruth Wakefield had extremely high standards.
Speaker 1: The linen's were always perfect and a augily. Wait staff
Speaker 1: were not allowed to write anything down. They were expected
Speaker 1: to memorize all orders as part of making the customers
Speaker 1: feel at home. We'll talk more about Ruth and Ken's
Speaker 1: restaurant after we hear from one of the sponsors that
Speaker 1: keep Stuffy miss and History class going. So for all
Speaker 1: of its homeliness, the toll house end did have a
Speaker 1: rather stern side, at least when it came to the staff.
Speaker 1: Ruth was very, very particular in the way everything ran.
Speaker 1: We mentioned already that servers were not allowed to write
Speaker 1: down orders. Servers also had a three month training period
Speaker 1: to learn the seven page service manual before they worked
Speaker 1: a shift on their own, and they only got two
Speaker 1: tables on a shift. Few have ever waited tables, that's nothing,
Speaker 1: but that was because they were responsible for those tables
Speaker 1: in their hirety, including setting them perfectly with silver placed
Speaker 1: quote one thumb print away from the edge of the table. Apparently,
Speaker 1: if you had not done it correctly, you had to
Speaker 1: clear the whole table and reset it. Ruth was also
Speaker 1: known to yell at staff that did not perform as expected,
Speaker 1: and the food had a reputation for excellence. Ruth had
Speaker 1: a background in food from her college days, and she'd
Speaker 1: also inherited her grandmother's recipes. She was just a really
Speaker 1: good cook with a gift for recipe creation. Once the
Speaker 1: restaurant was successful, she and Ken went on a trip
Speaker 1: to an overseas location once a year to taste foods
Speaker 1: of the world and seek out flavors they might incorporate
Speaker 1: into their menu. The Toll House in became well known
Speaker 1: enough that all manner of celebrities started stopping in when
Speaker 1: they were in New England, so everyone from Betty Davis
Speaker 1: to Eleanor Roosevelt said to have stopped there for a meal.
Speaker 1: In Ruth published a cookbook, Toll House Tried and True Recipes.
Speaker 1: That cookbook was reprinted twenty eight times in less than
Speaker 1: twenty five years. I read that ultimately it got reprinted
Speaker 1: something like thirty nine times. Don't quote me on that number,
Speaker 1: but it's in that range. And it grew with each
Speaker 1: subsequent printing because she would expand and add new recipes
Speaker 1: they were using at the restaurant. Ruth's recipes and particularly
Speaker 1: her desserts, were renowned, and even food critic Duncan Hinds
Speaker 1: raved about her meringue. So how did this lead to
Speaker 1: a chocolate chip cookie? There are multiple versions, and probably
Speaker 1: the most commonly repeated version of the story Ruth was improvising.
Speaker 1: She had run out of the nuts that she usually
Speaker 1: put in her brown sugar cookie dough or baker's chocolate,
Speaker 1: and added in bits of dark chocolate that she broke
Speaker 1: off of a semi sweet chocolate bar. The nut version
Speaker 1: of the story was told by almost all of her
Speaker 1: employees and ex employees for years. Another version was that
Speaker 1: the vibration of a mix sir had caused the chocolate
Speaker 1: to fall into the cookie batter, and in both of
Speaker 1: these versions, the batter was baked into cookies and Vala
Speaker 1: it was delicious. So there are some other less popular
Speaker 1: versions of this story, like one that she had run
Speaker 1: short of butter and was trying to make up the
Speaker 1: moisture with chocolate, but that and similar tales aren't really
Speaker 1: supported by any of the accounts given by people who
Speaker 1: actually worked at the toll house. In There is also
Speaker 1: a version that says Ruth expected the chocolate to melt
Speaker 1: into the dough and create a chocolate cookie, But that
Speaker 1: version kind of suggests that she would have had subsizeable
Speaker 1: gaps in her knowledge of mixing ingredients, and that makes
Speaker 1: no sense because remember, she had a degree in what
Speaker 1: was called household arts. At the time, and she taught
Speaker 1: home mac and she had also just been a really
Speaker 1: good cook for a long time. There is also another version,
Speaker 1: Ruth's version, but we're going to get to that in
Speaker 1: a minute. However, it happened, and that mixer story seems
Speaker 1: like a long shot because it would have dumped a
Speaker 1: whole or mostly whole bar of baking chocolate into the
Speaker 1: mix instead of broken apart pieces. Probably still would have
Speaker 1: been big pieces, even after going through one giant chocolate
Speaker 1: chip that's eight ounces. Yeah, Regardless of that, a new
Speaker 1: cookie was born, and restaurant visitors loved it so much
Speaker 1: so that if you asked afterward how to make these
Speaker 1: cookies yourself, you would get a hand typed card with
Speaker 1: the recipe from your server. The recipe went into the
Speaker 1: toll House Cookbook in the late nineteen thirties. Yeah, they
Speaker 1: just got so tired of people asking that they just
Speaker 1: started typing up recipe cards and having them ready at
Speaker 1: the start of every ship. The restaurant and it's amazing
Speaker 1: cookies were featured on a radio show called Famous Foods
Speaker 1: from Famous Eating Places, which was hosted by Betty Crocker herself,
Speaker 1: whose name was actually Merjuri hosted the recipe and variations
Speaker 1: on it soon started a peer in papers, and from
Speaker 1: there the company known as Lamont Corless and Company, which
Speaker 1: was making Nestle chocolate products in the US and eventually
Speaker 1: became part of Nestleie, became interested in part because their
Speaker 1: semi sweet chocolate bars were suddenly being sold in greater volume.
Speaker 1: They sent a representative to the toll House in and
Speaker 1: while Nestley was not the only chocolate company that had
Speaker 1: approached Ruth and wanted to talk to her about this,
Speaker 1: it was their chocolate that she liked to bake with
Speaker 1: and they struck a deal. This is another point that
Speaker 1: is told sometimes with some variations, because you might also
Speaker 1: see it told that Ruth approached Nestle and not the
Speaker 1: other way around. According to Ruth Wakefield, Nestley paid her
Speaker 1: a dollar and exchanged for the rights to the toll
Speaker 1: House cookie recipe. We don't know the exact details of
Speaker 1: the deal that Ruth and Nestley worked out, but she
Speaker 1: was shrewd enough not to give up her recipe for
Speaker 1: just a dollar. Speculation over the years has been that
Speaker 1: she was given in a complimentary chocolate supply for life
Speaker 1: and also that she served as a paid consultant for
Speaker 1: nest Lee on recipe development as part of that deal.
Speaker 1: That would make a lot more sense than just saying
Speaker 1: sure for a buck. Uh. If you live in the
Speaker 1: United States, you have probably seen that recipe printed a
Speaker 1: bazillion times on the backs of packets of chocolate chips,
Speaker 1: but for a while it was just printed on the
Speaker 1: wrapper of solid bars of chocolate. To add interest and
Speaker 1: appeal to getting the recipe and chocolate from Nestley, the
Speaker 1: company started scoring their bars so that they could easily
Speaker 1: be broken into one hundred sixty pieces that were, according
Speaker 1: to them, exactly the right size for baking cookies. The
Speaker 1: chocolate morsel soon followed in the early nineteen forties, so
Speaker 1: that that's when it went into bags and those cute
Speaker 1: little drops, And soon after that, other chocolate companies were
Speaker 1: introducing their own chocolate chips perfect for baking, and often
Speaker 1: their own cookie recipes as well to try to compete.
Speaker 1: But Wakefield's toll House Cookie had the benefit of the
Speaker 1: name recognition that the Toll House in had achieved in
Speaker 1: the decade plus it had been in business, so that
Speaker 1: kind of continued to reign supreme even during World War Two,
Speaker 1: when chocolate was in shorter supply, Nestlee used the shortage
Speaker 1: as a marketing angle. They ran ads that read quote,
Speaker 1: now that Nestlee's semi sweet chocolate is harder to get,
Speaker 1: put it to the best possible useless add went on
Speaker 1: to suggest that women make toll House cookies to send
Speaker 1: to their soldiers overseas. Ruth also started selling the cookies
Speaker 1: from the restaurant to be shipped overseas to troops. This
Speaker 1: is according to employees at the end, when they shifted
Speaker 1: the recipe to exclude nuts because they just didn't hold
Speaker 1: up that well in shipping. The recipe that appears on
Speaker 1: bags of chocolate morsels has actually changed several times over
Speaker 1: the years as ingredients have changed and things like pre
Speaker 1: sifted flour have become readily available. I'm pretty sure the
Speaker 1: recipe now does have nuts. As one example. It might
Speaker 1: but gross, Yeah, I don't. I don't put them in mind.
Speaker 1: I will talk about my favorite chocolatep recipe in our
Speaker 1: Behind the Scenes um. In nineteen sixty seven, after thirty
Speaker 1: seven years in the restaurant business and being very successful
Speaker 1: about it, Ruth and Ken sold the toll House in
Speaker 1: and they retired to Duxbury, Massachusetts. Ruth died ten years
Speaker 1: later in nineteen seventy seven. The toll House in burned
Speaker 1: in nineteen eighty four and it was not rebuilt, although
Speaker 1: the sign has been restored and there is now a
Speaker 1: historical marker plaque on the site. For a very very
Speaker 1: long time, Ruth herself was kg about how the chocolate
Speaker 1: cookie was invented. She never explained what prompted the change
Speaker 1: and the recipe, and in the nineteen eight version of
Speaker 1: her cookbook she even says that it's quote really a
Speaker 1: story by itself, but doesn't elaborate any further. And then suddenly,
Speaker 1: in nineteen seventy four she told a very different story.
Speaker 1: She told a reporter for The Boss and Harold American
Speaker 1: that it had been very carefully invented, not an accident,
Speaker 1: and her account quote, we had been serving a thin
Speaker 1: butterscotch nut cookie with ice cream. Everybody seemed to love it,
Speaker 1: but I was trying to give them something different, so
Speaker 1: I came up with the toll house cookie. She claims
Speaker 1: she had worked out the recipe as they were traveling
Speaker 1: home from Egypt. She also told a reporter from the
Speaker 1: Christian Science monitor that she had worked on the recipe
Speaker 1: with her pastry cook Sue Brides once she returned to
Speaker 1: the restaurant. There was incidentally, both a nut tea wafer
Speaker 1: and a chocolate crunch cookie in the nine edition of
Speaker 1: her cookbooks, So there is some evidence that backs up
Speaker 1: her story, but because Ruth was so evasive about it
Speaker 1: for four decades and she was known to do some
Speaker 1: savvy fibbing for marketing purposes, it's hard to know for certain. Incidentally,
Speaker 1: the original recipe for Wakefield's cookies that was first used
Speaker 1: in the restaurant isn't quite like the cookie that you'll
Speaker 1: it if you make the recipe. If you find it today,
Speaker 1: it's a lot less sweet and lighter and crunchier. It
Speaker 1: was to be baked all the way through and not
Speaker 1: left chewy in the middle. I mean, why would you
Speaker 1: not want chewy in the middle. I don't, Ruth, we
Speaker 1: gotta talk about this. UM. So that is where microwave
Speaker 1: ovens and chocolate chip cookies from. UM. I'm suddenly having
Speaker 1: a reminiscence about those microwave chocolate chip cookie packs when
Speaker 1: they were introduced, which I think you can still get,
Speaker 1: but I do not use them. Um, we'll probably have
Speaker 1: more accidental or not accidental inventions in the future because
Speaker 1: they're kind of fun. They're a nice uh refresher after
Speaker 1: we talk about murder all the time, which I've been doing.
Speaker 1: Uh so all of that. I also have listener mail
Speaker 1: from our listener cam which is going to talk about
Speaker 1: one of the murders. Are several murders in fact, Cam Rights.
Speaker 1: Hello ladies. I am a longtime listener and have emailed
Speaker 1: about transcripts a few times as many of your podcasts
Speaker 1: are very useful for my criminal justice class. I feel
Speaker 1: they're well researched and they provide insights that students might
Speaker 1: not get from a textbook, and the material you cover
Speaker 1: is often barely glazed over. I wanted to write to
Speaker 1: applaud your discussion about the relationship between crime and media
Speaker 1: and the Widemont episodes. I spent a lot of time
Speaker 1: in class talking about the media and how it impacts
Speaker 1: how we see crime and criminal justice in the United States.
Speaker 1: Our perceptions of how dangerous the world is and what
Speaker 1: appropriate punishment for a crime might be depends greatly on
Speaker 1: how it's portrayed. I always ask students to think about
Speaker 1: why a particular victim or offender is getting so much
Speaker 1: media attention and who is not receiving the same levels
Speaker 1: of attention e g. Is one of the victims or
Speaker 1: offenders attractive, does the offense violate societal norms and expectations?
Speaker 1: And what role is race ethnicity playing in these portrayals.
Speaker 1: There's a significant amount of research in this area that
Speaker 1: I won't bore you with, but I'm glad you highlighted
Speaker 1: this issue. We must always remember that very few media
Speaker 1: outlets are not for profit and they need to gain
Speaker 1: an audience, which often occurs through interesting headlines and selecious details.
Speaker 1: Preach cam Uh and then says thank you for all
Speaker 1: your hard work. I'm including a few pet photos. One
Speaker 1: is from Luna Ray Cosmos fluffy uppies first Gotcha Day
Speaker 1: a few days ago, are good, good boy, Prince Fury,
Speaker 1: Gronkey Bear, these names are spectacular, by the way, sitting
Speaker 1: lying next to his little sister, one of our kittens,
Speaker 1: Nebula and Aurora. When they were little, it took two
Speaker 1: kitties to fill the space left by my giant orange
Speaker 1: basketball of a cat bite. And finally, one of Nebulous
Speaker 1: sitting with her boy. She is the most patient kitty,
Speaker 1: who thankfully also gently enforces boundaries. I hope you're having
Speaker 1: a lovely day. Uh. Cam gives some episode suggestions and
Speaker 1: then writes, PS. I am listening to the Maria Gratrudis
Speaker 1: Barcelo episodes as I write this, and wanted to mention
Speaker 1: one funny thing. I grew up in Nevada and my
Speaker 1: mom was a casino worker, often dealing cards, which is
Speaker 1: a very common job. When I moved to upstate New
Speaker 1: York and people would ask what she did, I would
Speaker 1: use the common parlance I grew up with, she's a dealer.
Speaker 1: When that obviously confused folks, I would say she's a
Speaker 1: card dealer, but people would often mishear it and then
Speaker 1: wonder what vehicles she sold. Never would I have thought
Speaker 1: about that as being a locational confusion problem as you
Speaker 1: move away from that location. But see how that would go.
Speaker 1: I was talking to my hygienist about the episode when
Speaker 1: I got my last teeth cleaning, and I think she
Speaker 1: thought I was talking about drugs, right, Cam, Thank you
Speaker 1: so much. Also, man, those are beautiful pets, um and
Speaker 1: kiss every one of their faces for me. Uh. If
Speaker 1: you would like to write to us. Tell us your
Speaker 1: funny story about how you accidentally make your mom's career
Speaker 1: sounds delicious, or how you are working to make sure
Speaker 1: people understand that there is nuance in the ways stories
Speaker 1: are told in the media. Well, any of the or
Speaker 1: any of the other show. Just send us your kiddies
Speaker 1: and puppies. That's good too. You could do that at
Speaker 1: History Podcast at i heeart radio dot com. You can
Speaker 1: also find us on social media pretty much everywhere as
Speaker 1: Missed in History, and you can subscribe in the I
Speaker 1: heart radio app or wherever you listen to your favorite podcasts.
Speaker 1: Stuff you Missed in History Class is a production of
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