Ruth Graves Wakefield

Ruth Graves Wakefield ( Jones Graves; June 17, 1903 – January 10, 1977) was an American chef, known for her innovations in the baking field. She pioneered the first chocolate chip cookie recipe, an invention many people incorrectly assume was a mistake. Her new dessert, supposedly conceived of as she returned from a vacation in Egypt, is the inspiration behind the massively popular Toll House Chocolate Chip Cookie. Throughout her life, Wakefield found occupation as a dietitian, educator, business owner, and published author. She wrote a cookbook titled Ruth Wakefield’s, Toll House: Tried and True Recipes.

Personal life Ruth Jones Graves was born on June 17, 1903, in East Walpole, Massachusetts, to Fred Graves and Helen Vest Jones. Ruth married Kenneth Donald Wakefield, a meat packing executive, in 1928. Together, the couple had two children, Kenneth Donald Jr. and a daughter, Mary Jane. The news of her cooking prowess quickly spread, as the inn grew from seven to over sixty tables.

Toll House Inn

Wakefield and her husband bought a tourist lodge that they called the Tollhouse Inn. She cooked for the guests using her own recipes and some of her grandmother's old recipes that became very successful and grew the Inn's dining room from seven tables to 60. Her recipes were so popular that she released multiple cookbooks, the most popular being a cookbook titled Ruth Wakefield's Tried and True Recipes in 1931.

Toll House Cookies and World War II

The Toll House Cookies rose to popularity in the 1940s, during World War II. Ruth's daughter (who worked as a cooking assistant) recalls days in the kitchen filled with packing care packages to send to the Massachusetts troops overseas. They soon began receiving letters from all over the country requesting that the packages including Toll House Cookies be sent to troops from other states.

Death Ruth retired in 1966 and sold the Toll House, which later burned down in 1984. Ruth died on January 10, 1977, in Plymouth, Massachusetts, at the age of 73.