a brief history of (and a short ode to) the crisp

where there’s a will, there’s a lay.

Photo by Mustafa Bashari on Unsplash.

A long time ago, in a century far, far away there lived some people in some places. The year was 1817 and it started on a Wednesday, it gave birth to Henry David Thoreau and it killed Jane Austen. As years go, it was a bit of a mixed bag, really.

During this year also, lived an Englishman named William Kitchiner. This man had many professions including optician, telescope inventor and amateur musician. He may have been the first millennial multi-hyphenate. And if all that wasn’t enough to make you feel like a giant underachiever, William was also a very good cook and a very good writer of words about the things he cooked. So good, in fact, that his book The Cook’s Oracle was a bestseller in England AND the United States. Nice one, Will.

The Cook’s Oracle was to be the holy grail of savoury snacking. It featured a recipe of William’s named “Potatoes fried in Slices or Shavings” – the basis of crisps as we know them today. The recipe instructed readers to:

Peel large potatoes, slice them about a quarter of an inch thick, or cut them in shavings round and round, as you would peel a lemon; dry them well in a clean cloth, and fry them in lard or dripping.

A few years later, this recipe popped up in a few more US cookbooks too, citing Kitchiner as the original source. This was probably the equivalent of going viral in those days and meant that on paper, Will is indeed documented as the inventor of the crisp.

And with great success comes great travel opportunity, and William travelled a lot promoting his wondrous cooking concoctions. On every trip, he apparently took a portable cabinet of taste (can you imagine) with him that included things like mustards and sauces. If you, like me, have ever stolen a sachet of ketchup or mayo from a fast food chain and kept it in your car ‘just in case’, you don’t have to listen to any abuse from your friends/partner/parents anymore. If it’s good enough for the Great Crisp Inventor, it’s good enough for you.

Then, the 20th century began just after the 19th century, and it brought big economic, technological and social change to the world. For all the crisps, the 20th century brought the opportunity to not just stay on chef-cooked plates, but to jump into the mouths of the many across the mass-market – as the home snack.

Mike-sell’s Potato Chip Company in Ohio claims to be the ‘oldest potato chip company in the United States’. Somewhat similarly, the Leominster Potato Chip Company in Massachusetts claims to be ‘America’s first potato chip manufacturer’. Since we don’t know who originally shotgunned it, we’ll just have to leave that there and accept that it could’ve been either one of them.

Fastforward to today. The global crisp industry generates huge amounts of money every year, reaching $46.1 billion and accounting for 35.5% of the total savoury snacks market in 2005. Not to mention also accounting for 92% of my personal diet.

It’s wild to think that from their humble beginnings in a cookbook, potatoes fried in slices or shavings now live in their own colourful bags, and are celebrated in different shapes, sizes and flavours – all over the world. But I guess it’s just like that saying: Where there’s a Will, there’s a Lay.

If you’ve followed me on Instagram over the years, you will undoubtedly know me as the crisp girl. Because of the very serious documenting I’ve done of my crisp purchases, crisp reviews, crisp parties and crisp art, I seem to have positioned myself as a person whose main personality trait is: liking crisps. This is undeniably accurate, so I figured I needed to find a way to bring this (significant) part of my life to Substack, by way of a new series: Crunch Time.

It’s nothing complicated or fancy. Just a new place to share and celebrate a lifelong love of crisps – from the trusty old classics that definitely work in sandwiches to new flavours that blow my mind and limited editions that make me stockpile because of my FORO (fear of running out).

I hope you’re as excited about this as I am. To start, tell me your favourite crisp in the comments below.

Stay crispy,

Em