The story
The chocolate chip cookie is credited to Ruth Graves Wakefield, who ran the Toll House Inn, a roadside restaurant in Whitman, Massachusetts, with her husband Kenneth. In the 1930s she chopped a Nestlé semi-sweet bar into pieces and stirred them into a brown-sugar butter dough. Popular legend says she ran out of nuts, but she later described a deliberate attempt to offer something new to serve with ice cream. Similar cookies may have existed earlier, but hers took off: the recipe appeared in her 1938 cookbook, Boston papers were calling them chocolate chip cookies by 1939, and Nestlé printed the recipe on its packaging and launched chocolate morsels.
Also known as Toll House cookie, Toll House chocolate chip cookie, choc chip cookie.
On the Meridish menu
Chocolate chip cookie was the dessert course on menu No. 17 on October 17, 2026. Its clue in the game, which hints at the place without naming it:
A butter cookie studded with chopped chocolate, first baked in the 1930s at a roadside inn in this small town. The inn's name is still printed on bags of chocolate chips.
In Meridish, every dish is pinned to the town or city most widely credited with creating it. A guess within 25 km scores all 100 points. How scoring works.
Sources
Food history is often disputed. Think we've pinned it in the wrong place? Tell us at hello@meridish.com, ideally with a source.
