The Toll House Inn was an inn located in Whitman, Massachusetts , established in 1930 by Kenneth and Ruth Graves Wakefield . The Toll House chocolate chip cookies are named after the inn.
6-412: Contrary to its name and the sign, which still stands despite the building having burned down in 1984, the site was never a toll house , and it was built in 1817, not 1709. The use of "toll house" and "1709" was a marketing strategy. Ruth Wakefield cooked all the food served and soon gained local fame for her desserts . According to early accounts, Wakefield created the first chocolate chip cookie using
12-410: A bar of semi-sweet chocolate made by Nestlé while adapting her butter drop dough cookie recipe . In 1938, Wakefield and her assistant, Sue Brides, used chocolate after wanting to "do something a little more interesting with" their already popular butterscotch nut cookie. The new dessert soon became very popular. Wakefield contacted Nestlé and they struck a deal: the company would print her recipe on
18-697: The 18th and early 19th centuries. Those built in the early 19th century often had a distinctive bay front to give the pikeman a clear view of the road and to provide a display area for the tollboard. In 1840, according to the Turnpike Returns in Parliamentary Papers, there were over 5,000 tollhouses operating in England. These were sold off in the 1880s when the turnpikes were closed. Many were demolished but several hundred have survived for residential or other use, with distinctive features of
24-475: The cover of all their semi-sweet chocolate bars, and she would get a lifetime supply of chocolate. Nestlé began marketing chocolate chips to be used especially for cookies . Wakefield wrote a cookbook , Toll House Tried and True Recipes , that went through 39 printings. Wakefield died in 1977, and the Toll House Inn burned down from a fire that started in the kitchen on New Year's Eve 1984. The inn
30-587: The old tollhouses still visible. Canal toll houses were built in very similar style to those on turnpikes. They are sited at major canal locks or at junctions. The great age of canal-building in Britain was in the 18th century, so the majority exhibit the typical features of vernacular Georgian architecture . In the English Midlands, a major area of 18th century canal development, most are of mellow red brick and hexagonal in plan, and tall enough to give
36-527: Was not rebuilt. The site, at 362 Bedford Street, is marked with a historical marker and mounted restored sign. Although there are many manufacturers of chocolate chips today, Nestlé still publishes Wakefield's recipe on the back of each package of Toll House Morsels. Toll house A tollhouse or toll house is a building with accommodation for a toll collector, beside a tollgate on a toll road , canal , or toll bridge . Many tollhouses were built by turnpike trusts in England, Wales and Scotland during
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