How the Hot Dog Found Its Bun

by Josh Chetwynd

When Gerry Thomas told listeners about how he created the TV dinner—those easily reheated, multipocket tin-tray meals—he gave the story a flair that only someone who knew how to sell could offer. Not surprisingly, Thomas was a salesman. In the early 1950s he made $200 a month for C. A. Swanson and Sons, which sold foodstuff in bulk to restaurants and other companies.

  As Thomas relayed the tale, a business snafu provided him with the opportunity to change American eating habits. In the fall of 1951, abnormally temperate weather led to fewer turkeys being sold at Thanksgiving. “It was very warm on the East Coast, so there was less demand for turkeys,” Thomas would recount more than fifty years later. This left Swanson with a staggering 520,000 pounds of surplus turkey meat. Without even a properly acclimatized warehouse to put the birds, the meat was stuck on refrigerated railway cars crisscrossing the United States.

  Swanson needed a plan and Thomas stepped in. On a sales call in Pittsburgh, he came across a single-compartment metal tray that was being used by Pan Am Airlines for in-flight meals on overseas journeys. Thomas asked if he could have one of the trays and on the flight back to Swanson’s Omaha, Nebraska, headquarters he took inspiration from his find and sketched a modified three-compartment tray. The final part of his plan came while walking by an appliance store. He saw a group huddled around the window, rubbernecking to check out a small 10-inch screen.

  “I figured if you could borrow from that, maybe you could get some attention,” Thomas said in a 1999 interview.

  These trays—and his marketing plan—would be the answer to Swanson’s turkey problem, he told his bosses. Along with turkey covered with gravy and a corn bread dressing, the original TV dinners included sweet potatoes and buttered peas. In 1953 they made their debut at ninety-eight cents a dinner and became an instant hit with approximately ten million units sold in the first year. According to Thomas, his reward was a salary increase to $300 a month and a $1,000 bonus.

  This story has been endorsed in one form or another by many people. The Frozen Food Hall of Fame inducted Thomas into its ranks for his work on the TV dinner. In 1999 he had his hands (and a tray) immortalized in cement outside Hollywood’s famous Chinese Theatre. Even Maxim magazine ranked Thomas twenty-eighth on its list of the “50 Greatest Guys of the Century”—three spots ahead of James Bond, no less. In his later years, Thomas, who died in 2005, served as an ambassador for the dinner, traveling around with silver cufflinks in the shape of TV dinner trays (the Swanson family no longer owned the company by that point).

  But with slick salesmen you have to be a little careful about what you’re purchasing. Journalist Roy Rivenburg raised a number of questions about Thomas’s story in a 2003 Los Angeles Times article. Rivenburg pointed out that rather than being unseasonably warm, November 1951 was unusually cold, throwing some doubt into the underpinning of the railway car story. Thomas would recant a bit on that fact, saying that the train story was “a metaphor” for an “annual problem” Swanson had when it came to unloading excess turkey meat. Rivenburg also offered alternative candidates as the TV dinner’s true parents, including company heads Clarke and Gilbert Swanson and a handful of other employees at the company. Finally, he pointed out that other companies were selling similar types of frozen dinners before the TV dinner, suggesting that even if Thomas’s inspiration was legit, he wasn’t the first.

  Still, nothing is definitive and Rivenburg did interview one figure knowledgeable about the origins of the trays who seemed to corroborate at least part of Thomas’s claims. One thing is certain: Thomas’s account was used for years as part of the TV dinner’s marketing strategy with the media. Beyond that, it’s buyer beware.

  Desserts

  Chocolate Chip Cookies: Missing ingredient

  If you read the writings of Ruth Graves Wakefield, you’d think she was straight out of central casting for the domesticated housewife. She literally studied household arts at the Framingham State Normal School (class of 1924) and wrote cookbooks that encouraged new brides to “try a lot of these recipes, especially those which are your husband’s favorites.” She even laid out a list of thirty-six must-dos that every woman should perform in order to reach “your goal of being a proficient wife and hostess.” (Example: serving perfect coffee.)

  With words like that, you can just picture the perfectly dressed Mrs. Wakefield (apron nicely tied), serving a batch of her most famous creation: the chocolate chip cookie. She was surely a product of her times—for example, she would insist that there were “no substitutes [her italics] for butter [and] cream.” But to put her in a box based on her writing isn’t fair. In actuality, Wakefield was a successful writer, dietitian, lecturer, and businesswoman. And, as the regularly retold story goes, besides inventing the chocolate chip cookie to overcome a cooking problem she faced in the kitchen, she also knew how to capitalize on her unplanned discovery.

  In August 1930, Ruth and her husband, Kenneth, purchased a Cape Cod–style house on the outskirts of Whitman, Massachusetts. The building was loaded with history. Erected in 1709, it had been used as a toll house and rest stop on the road between New Bedford and Boston. Drawing from history, the Wakefields turned the cozy spot into an inn, which they called The Toll House.

  Considering her mastery of the household arts, Ruth probably ran many of the day-to-day elements of the hotel, but she was without a doubt queen of the kitchen. First published in 1936, her cookbook Ruth Wakefield’s Toll House Tried and True Recipes went through some thirty-nine editions. It offers a spectrum of recipes for such tantalizing fare as onion soup, lobster thermidor, and chicken soufflé.

  But it’s her Toll House Chocolate Crunch Cookies that she became most known for. Amazingly this recipe, which calls for two bars of “Nestlé’s yellow label chocolate, semi-sweet, which has been cut in pieces the size of a pea” was the first ever to include chocolate chips. That’s saying a lot because cookies, which come from the Dutch word koekje (meaning “little cake”), have a history dating back to the seventh century and chocolate bars were invented in the mid-nineteenth century.

  Why did Wakefield decide to change the destiny of the cookie? The vastly popular lore goes like this: In 1930 Wakefield was making butter cookies when she realized a key ingredient was missing (some say it was nuts, while others claim it was cooking chocolate). Either she didn’t have the time or the inclination to pop out for the missing materials so she broke up some Nestlé chocolate bars with an ice pick and used those pieces instead. Much to her surprise the combination was fantastic and she christened her find Chocolate Crispies. Another slightly simpler version states that Wakefield simply threw chocolate pieces into cookie dough on a whim, stumbling into pure cookie heaven.

  Nestlé discovered Wakefield’s work when one of its salesmen began inquiring into why their chocolate bars were selling so well in Wakefield’s town of Whitman. In 1939, Wakefield negotiated a forty-year contract with the company. That year Nestlé started selling their chocolate in “morsel” form—or as we better know them, as chips. They also printed Wakefield’s recipe on the bag and renamed the confection Toll House Cookies.

  Nestlé must have liked this tale because during the cookie’s fiftieth anniversary proceedings in 1980, the accidental discovery story was offered up (those stories were running in newspapers by at least 1955). That said, a Christian Science Monitor article that ran in 1977, the year Wakefield died, asserted that Wakefield may have been more deliberate in her efforts. According to journalist Phyllis Hanes, who reported from Whitman, Wakefield had remembered experiments from her college food chemistry classes and resolved to come up with a new treat as an alternative to her crisp pecan icebox cookies. After trial-and-error, she and her pastry cook, Sue Bridges, developed the perfect recipe. Wakefield’s own words seem to bolster this account. She once wrote, “Certainty in place of guessing eliminates failures.” This suggests she wasn’t one to haphazardly throw ingredients in a bowl and go for it.

  If the Monitor’s story is accurate, Wakefield certainly showed a
businesswoman’s smarts. It appears she never publicly contradicted the more fanciful yarn—a shrewd choice that likely sold more bags of chocolate chips for Nestlé.

  Chocolate Molten Cake (Chocolate Lava Cake): Celebrity chef flub

  Even celebrity chefs get it wrong sometimes.

  French native Jean-Georges Vongerichten made a name for himself in the ever-competitive New York City cooking scene and went on to establish restaurants throughout the world, including spots in such far-flung locales as the Bahamas and Shanghai. Though some have criticized the chef for spreading himself a bit too thin over the years, he is beloved by many discerning food critics.

  One once wrote that “as gracefully as any of his peers, Jean-Georges Vongerichten shows that today’s globe-trotting genre-straddling, hyperextended super chef can still create memorable—even riveting—meals.” Another critic called him a “legend . . . one of the most influential and creative chefs of our time. His food, which eschews thick butter and cream sauces for vegetable broths, fruit juices, and infused oils, is extolled as being ethereally light, clean, and simple.”

  Yet back in 1987, he was a young chef with a lot on his mind. He was running the kitchen at the Restaurant Lafayette, located in Manhattan’s now-defunct Drake Hotel. One night Vongerichten was charged with putting together a private dinner for 300 guests. It was a tall task for a man who at the time hadn’t experienced the crush of cooking so many dishes for a group. This was particularly the case when it came to preparing a slew of the small chocolate cakes that were set for the evening’s menu.

  “Baking one and baking 300 is different,” he told the Chicago Tribune in 2006. “They were supposed to be cooked through, but the oven temperature dropped. We miscalculated the timing.” The result was a cake that had a firm outer shell and a chocolate gooey center. Before he realized the miscue, the cakes were in the dining room. Vongerichten claimed that not only were people chowing down, but they were also “screaming wanting the recipe.”

  He would go on to name the dish Valrhona cake with vanilla ice cream (Valrhona is the name of the chocolate he used in making the dessert). The rest of America embraced it as chocolate molten cake or chocolate lava cake (my family simply calls it “the ooze”). Others—particularly some French pastry chefs—have claimed to be the first, but Vongerichten brought celebrity to the dish. As Jacques Torres, a longtime pastry chef at iconic New York establishment Le Cirque, put it, “He was the first to make it in America, but it existed in France already.”

  Interestingly, Vongerichten did not always tell such a colorful origin story. In 1991, just a few years after he introduced his creation, the chef told prominent New York Times food writer Florence Fabricant that he got the recipe for the cake from his mother. At the time a number of other ambitious chefs were trying to stake a claim to the cake’s provenance so maybe Vongerichten felt he needed a more ironclad story. As he got older, perhaps he felt more confident to disclose the truth behind the sweet dish. Whatever the case, the undercooked cake tale has become part of his lore and his dessert has developed into a staple at high-end dining spots as well as places that Jean-Georges might not approve of.

  Cookies ’n Cream Ice Cream: Short work break

  John Harrison may very well have the greatest job on the planet. As the official taste tester for Edy’s Grand Ice Cream, he spends all day making sure various flavors meet quality control standards. He even uses a gold spoon, as wood and plastic varieties leave an aftertaste and silver tends to tarnish. All told, he’s checked approximately 200 million gallons of the sweet delicacy—though his doctor would be happy to know that he doesn’t swallow any of the scoops he samples. As he puts it, he has a three-step process: “Swirl, smack, and spit . . . You’re going to get the appearance, you’re going to get the flavor, and you’re going to get the texture. And that’s what you’re looking for.” Along with tasting, Harrison, a fourth generation ice-cream man, also dabbles in creation, having developed more than seventy new flavors.

  Yet his biggest discovery—Cookies ’n Cream—didn’t come from advanced testing, but from a need to snack quickly before getting back on the job. In 1982, while taking a break from the lab (yep, ice-cream tasters have a laboratory), he wanted a simple scoop of vanilla, which is Harrison’s favorite. He went to the company ice-cream parlor and alongside his bowl were a few chocolate cookies. Ironically, he didn’t have a lot of time to eat his ice cream because he needed to get back to tasting ice cream. To speed up the process, he broke up the cookies and tossed them in with his snack. Harrison, who reportedly has his nine thousand taste buds insured for one million dollars, immediately knew he was savoring something special.

  “I was in a hurry,” said Harrison reflecting on the moment nearly two decades later in a 2001 Reading Eagle article. “And I thought it would just be faster if I put the cookies into the ice cream. Cookies ’n Cream was invented by accident.”

  As simple as the cookies-plus-vanilla-ice-cream-combo might seem, nobody had mass-produced the product. At least two others in the 1970s—a South Dakota State University dairy plant manager named Shirley W. Seas and Massachusetts ice-cream parlor owner Steve Herrell—have claimed to have been first with the idea. But nothing had hit the worldwide market until Harrison threw together the mixture.

  Interestingly, it required an act of God for Edy’s to jump on the opportunity to sell the stuff. When Harrison went to his bosses with his new flavor, they originally weren’t too interested. They believed it was too much of a kids’ flavor and worried it wouldn’t have mass appeal. Luckily for Cookies ’n Cream lovers everywhere, the winter of 1982 didn’t treat peaches in the South very kindly. Huge hail storms decimated the crop, which left Edy’s in a dilemma. They’d planned on rolling out a Perfectly Peach flavor, but they weren’t going to have enough fruit to make it happen.

  Harrison stepped up, going back into the file cabinet and suggesting that the company use his cookie-and-cream ice-cream concoction as a replacement. The company, which is also known as Dreyer’s in the western United States, agreed but did so reluctantly. In 1983 executives said they’d give the flavor ninety days and then reassess. Within no time, Cookies ’n Cream was a hit, becoming the fifth-highest selling flavor in the word—a lofty height that Perfectly Peach would have probably never reached.

  Crêpes Suzette: Clumsy waiter

  Henri Charpentier was a true bon vivant. A chef of the highest order, he worked at top-notch restaurants in Paris as well as the Savoy in London before being lured to the United States to run the kitchen at New York’s famed Delmonico’s. A storyteller with a knack for drama, he once declared he made four million dollars as a chef and restaurateur before losing it all. That would be an impressive feat for a man whose career primarily spanned the first half of the twentieth century.

  Yet for all his success (and failure), Charpentier’s greatest claim to history occurred when he was a clumsy sixteen-year-old boy.

  I would not do his tale justice, so I now hand it over to Charpentier, who explained just months before he died how he allegedly created crêpes Suzette in Monte Carlo in 1896:

  I was only sixteen and serving the Prince of Wales, son of Queen Victoria, later King Edward VIII of England. Among the diners at the Prince’s table was a beautiful French girl named Suzette. I cannot recall her last name. It does not matter.

  His highness ordered crêpes—the French pancakes. I mixed the sauce, and added a brandy blend of my own. As I did, the heat of the chafing dish accidentally set the simmering cordials afire.

  I was embarrassed but I did not show it. I poured the fiery sauce on the crêpes, as if the flames were set on purpose. The prince tasted. Then he smiled and said: “Henri, what have you done with these crêpes? They are superb.”

  I was thrilled and offered to name them in his honor. But he declined. “Henri,” he said, “we must always remember that the ladies come first. We will call this glorious thing crêpes Suzette.” That was the day, monsieur. People had been eating panca
kes from the days of Napoleon—even the Romans—but never before that day crêpes Suzette.

  According to Charpentier’s 1934 autobiography, Life à la Henri, the Prince sent over “a jeweled ring, a Panama hat, and a cane” the next day in gratitude for his creation.

  There are numerous experts who question this story. The Oxford Companion to Food insists it was developed at Paris’s Restaurant Paillard in 1889 and named after an actress who played a chambermaid serving pancakes in a contemporary comedy. The food encyclopedia does point out that this original version did not have liquor and was not flamed at the table like Charpentier’s bungled effort.

  However preposterous, it’s hard not to root for the veracity of Charpentier’s story. Late in life, he found himself in the Southern California seaside town of Redondo Beach financially broken with just ten dollars in his pocket. He secured a very small space—described once as “unglamorous as a hamburger stand”—and began serving a single dinner to one party a night. Groups of between twelve and sixteen guests would beg to score a table and indulge in the master’s cooking, for which he charged an extremely reasonable eight dollars a head. His patrons had to be incredibly patient: It took four years to get in for a meal.

  Charpentier, who passed away in 1961, could have cashed in on his notoriety, but he seemed pleased to take things slow. “I only make enough money to live. . . . My reward is the joy of good eating, good companionship, and happy diners,” he said.

  His crêpes Suzette story is likely a tall tale, but if that’s the only reason he’s remembered today, I’m buying.

  Granny Smith Apples: Garbage discovery

  Quick quiz: Which of the following was an actual person: Betty Crocker, Granny Smith, or Aunt Jemima? As we’re talking about those great green apples in this section (America’s favorite apple pie filler), I’m sure you’re not surprised that the correct answer is Granny Smith. Before she was a granny, Maria Smith had lived a lot of life. Born in 1800 in Sussex, England, Maria, along with her husband, Thomas, and their five children, emigrated to New South Wales, Australia, in 1838. After a number of years in the new country, the family bought a thirty-four-acre farm for £605 (approximately $56,000 in today’s dollars) and started growing fruit.