The eternal potato chip

There is scarcely a more widely loved salty snack than the all-American potato chip, which reliably rises to its zenith in sales during the summertime. I don’t generally have them in the house year-round, but I find it difficult to get through the summertime without buying at least a few bags of chips to serve with sandwiches.

Though Thomas Jefferson has the distinction of having introduced fried potatoes to America in the late 18^th century, potato chips did not come into being until 1853. That fateful year, when fried potatoes were commonly featured on restaurant menus across the country, one disgruntled restaurant patron decided that he didn’t like the way his potatoes had been prepared.

The customer — rumored to have been Commodore Cornelius Vanderbilt — had ordered fried potatoes with his meal at the posh Moon’s Lake House restaurant in New York’s Saratoga Springs. Dissatisfied with the texture, he sent the potatoes back, telling the waiter to inform the chef that the potatoes needed to be crispier.

The chef, a Native American member of the Huron tribe named George Crum, was livid with this criticism. He knew what he was doing in the kitchen and he had no use for a diner’s input.

Crum decided to give Vanderbilt exactly what he’d asked for, hoping to ruin dinner for the magnate in the process. Crum sliced up some potatoes paper-thin, salted them quite heavily and fried them. Contrary to the chef’s plans, Vanderbilt pronounced the potatoes perfect and raved about them to the other diners. Within weeks, the restaurant owner had put “Saratoga Potato Chips” on the permanent menu. Crum eventually left to open his own restaurant featuring the chips. It wasn’t long before potato chips (the “Saratoga” was eventually dropped) were a popular menu item at restaurants nationwide.

A Cleveland, Ohio man named William Tappendon generally gets the credit for having transformed potato chips from being solely a restaurant item into something you could buy at the grocery store. In 1890, he was selling his own homemade potato chips to local grocers, delivering the goods himself via horsedrawn carriage. By 1895, he had converted his barn into the world’s first potato chip factory.

By the 1930s, two companies which are fundamental to the potato chip boom had come into being. Wise Potato Chips was launched in the 1920s when Earl Wise, Sr. was trying to figure out what to do with the extra potatoes he had in the kitchen at his Pennsylvania delicatessen. He decided to make potato chips out of the extras and sell them in brown paper bags at the deli.

A few years later, in 1932, Herman Lay was working in Nashville as a distributor for a chip factory in Atlanta. By 1938, Lay had purchased the chip factory and renamed it so that he could sell Lay’s Potato Chips.

Years ago, because I can be a wingnut about food, some local folks and I decided to do a little blind taste test with potato chips, avoiding the national brands. There are at least five different brands of potato chips made in Ohio and Pennsylvania, and we included four of them in the test (unfortunately, we were unable to find Utz Potato Chips at our local Giant Eagle, so they were not included).

The brands we used were DanDee, Giant Eagle’s house brand, Herr’s and Snyder’s. To make life simple, we used only the plainest of the plain potato chip versions offered by each company. No kettle chips, no rippled or ruffled versions, nothing baked and nothing flavored. We wanted pure and simple potato chip flavor. Our testers included everyone from preschoolers on up to senior citizens, all of whom love potato chips in some form or another.

The clear taste test winner was the Giant Eagle brand. We contacted Giant Eagle to find out what makes their potato chips so good. Ray Smaltz, then the Vice-President of Merchandising for Giant Eagle, told us, “In the early 1990s, we were looking to change our potato chip program [and may I say here that I have a wee crush on the very idea of a potato chip PROGRAM]. We’d been going out and interviewing a number of area chip manufacturers. The winner ended up being a company southwest of Cleveland called Shearer’s. We did five different blind taste tests in malls from West Virginia to Erie, and when Shearer’s won every blind taste test against the national brands, we decided we didn’t have to do anything else but get them to produce our potato chips.”

Smaltz credits Shearer’s for having a good relationship with their potato suppliers, using top-quality oils, having a state-of-the-art facility, and getting the potato chips out to the stores fast, fast, fast. Smaltz points out, “They’re local and we’re local. The chips are really fresh, and we sell a lot of them, so the racks fill up again quickly with more fresh chips. Age kills potato chips. It’s really just awful for them. So it helps that we’re not bringing in the chips from a million miles away and shipping them all over the country.”

Tom Shearer, then the Executive Vice President at Shearer’s Foods in Brewster, Ohio, was delighted to hear the news of the taste test. The scion of this family-owned company concurs with Smaltz’s opinion, saying, “The chips we make today will be on Giant Eagle’s shelves tomorrow morning. Sometimes the bags leave here still barely warm. You can’t beat that, and it makes a real difference in the taste.”

Shearer says that cottonseed oil is the oil of choice for the chips his company makes for Giant Eagle. “It doesn’t intrude or dominate. It really allows the potato flavor to come out, so we think it has a broader consumer appeal than other types of oils.” As for the chips themselves, Shearer explains, “These are potatoes grown specifically for potato chip production. There are different types, depending on the time of year. Potato chip potatoes are used because they don’t have as much sugar and starch as regular baking potatoes. You get too much sugar and the chip is prone to getting overcooked, which nobody wants.”

A company like Shearer’s can produce up to 100,000 pounds of potato chips each day — although the average is around 30,000 pounds daily.

Our testers weren’t the only ones impressed with what Shearer’s can do. Shearer’s potato chips were voted the best potato chips in America for two consecutive years by the American Taste Institute in San Francisco. Shearer’s makes a point of transforming their potatoes into potato chips within two days — other chip companies, especially national ones, can warehouse their potatoes for up to six months.

After production, the Shearer’s chips are electronically scanned. Overly browned chips, along with the potato peels and scraps, are sold to local farmers as food supplements for livestock. The good chips are bagged and sent out immediately, allowing for unbeatable freshness.

Probably the most useful lesson to take from this unscientific and unrigorous taste test from lo these many years ago is that everyone’s Utopian potato chip is different. Overall, I thought it was really cool that small(ish), local(ish) companies won out. Yay for Shearer’s and Giant Eagle because the end result was that our taste testers’ points system awarded the Giant Eagle brand Potato Chip King of All It Surveys.

And as if all the above weren’t enough, here’s some cool potato chip history:

1853 — Potato chips are created. Railroad magnate Commodore Cornelius Vanderbilt, dining at a resort in Saratoga Springs, New York, didn’t like the fried potatoes he ordered for dinner. He sent them back to the kitchen, complaining they were too thick. Taking offense, chef George Crum sliced more potatoes paper-thin, fried them to a crisp in boiling oil, and salted them. To Crum’s annoyance, Vanderbilt loved the result and pretty much overnight, “Saratoga Chips” became an enduring favorite with the resort’s socialite patrons.

1890 — William Tappendon of Cleveland starts delivering his homemade chips to neighborhood stores in a horse-drawn wagon. Orders increase, and his barn becomes the first potato chip factory in the world.

1926 — Chip-maker Laura Scudder of Montgomery Park, California invents the first potato chip-specific bag by ironing sheets of wax paper into lightweight cloth bags. She fills the bags with chips and irons them shut. Before this, retailers had kept chips in cracker barrels or glass displays. Laura Scudder was one determined chip fan.

1937 — The National Potato Chip Institute (now known as the SNAC, which stands for “snacking, nutrition and convenience”) is founded to educate retailers and consumers on the proper use of potato chips. The campaign includes warnings that a) the chips can’t be used like soap chips to wash clothes and b) they are not at all tasty poured into a bowl with sugar and cream.

1943 — During World War II, production of potato chips continues, but ingredients are firmly rationed.

1946 — Fifteen-year-old Dorthea Fagnano of Yonkers, New York is crowned the first Potato Chip Queen for her “Potato Chips à la Gorton” casserole made with potato chips, carrots, onions and cheese.

1949 — The Vincent Lopez Orchestra and the Martin Sisters record a song for the National Potato Chip Institute titled “Potato Chips,” which aired along with tunes like “Rum and Coca Cola” and “The Popcorn Polka.”

1970 — Annual potato chip sales in America reach $1 million for the first time.

1973 — The potato chip industry takes a beating as prices for gas — used to fire their cookers — soar. Potato prices also go through the roof after a particularly bad growing season.

1983 — Thicker, ridged chips made especially for dipping are introduced.

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