The Rise of the Chocolate Chip Cookie: Kitchens, Cookbooks, and Modernity in the Early Twentieth Century

Abstract

This thesis explores the rise in popularity of the chocolate chip cookie in the 1930s. It argues this popularity was dually rooted in challenges created by technological innovations of the oven and in the publication of new technical cookbooks written to address those difficulties. In the nineteenth century, kitchen appliances relied upon a present cook to monitor the approximate heat of the oven and progress of a bake using a vague recipe. However, in the twentieth century, ovens came with thermostats and timers, and as a result, recipes grew more exact to match. Unfortunately, home cooks had difficulty updating older recipes to this level of specificity, and they needed to learn new modes of baking. To solve this problem, motherly figures such as Ruth Wakefield published cookbooks that aided struggling home cooks. The popularity of this cookie offers a unique look at how the American cooks dealt with the rapid onset of modernity in the 1920s and 1930s by falling back on a dependable motherly figure offering traditional concepts of baking while embracing new ideas and ingredients. This thesis evidences cookbooks and newspapers to demonstrate these changes within the kitchen itself and elaborate on the pressures faced by home cooks.