BLACK HISTORY MONTH" (BLACK MAN CREATED POTATO CHIPS)

BLACK HISTORY MONTH" (BLACK MAN CREATED POTATO CHIPS)

George "Speck" Crum (1822 – 1914), son of "a mulatto jockey and an Indian maid," was the cook at Moon's Lake House, a resort at the south end of the lake in Saratoga Springs, New York. He is widely credited as the inventor of potato chips.

According to one story, on August 24, 1853, a customer complained that Crum's french fries were "too thick."

The angered cook was frustrated by this remark, so he decided to give the maximal opposite of what the client was complaining about: he sliced potatoes paper-thin, overfried them to a crisp, and seasoned them with an excess of salt. When the crisps were prepared, he gave them to the customer, expecting him to be dissatisfied. However, the customer loved them.

The chips became popular, and became known as Saratoga chips. Crum was able to open his own restaurant in 1860 with the profits he made selling his new chips.



They remained a local delicacy until the Prohibition era, when an enterprising salesman named Herman Lay popularized the product throughout the Southeast United States.

According to urban legend, the hard-to-please customer in Saratoga Springs was none other than railroad magnate Commodore Cornelius Vanderbilt