96 Fun Facts About Potato Chip

The earliest known potato chip recipe was printed in 1817 in a bestselling cookbook from which country?

England. Dr William Kitchiner's The Cook's Oracle told readers to cut potatoes 'in shavings round and round, as you would peel a lemon' and fry them in lard or dripping.

Legend credits the potato chip to a cook at Moon's Lake House in which New York resort town?

Saratoga Springs. The tale has a cook slicing potatoes paper-thin to spite a fussy diner in 1853, but historians note the Moon family did not even buy the Lake House until 1854.

A 1973 advertising campaign added which tycoon to the potato chip legend as the fussy diner?

Cornelius Vanderbilt. The ad came from a paper company that made chip bags, 120 years after the supposed meal, and the real Commodore had spent that summer touring Europe.

Which cook does legend credit with inventing the potato chip in 1853 to spite a customer who sent back his fries?

George Crum. Born George Speck, he really did cook at Moon's Lake House and later ran a restaurant of his own, but recipes for the chip had been in print for decades by then.

Before sealed bags arrived in the 1920s, grocers usually sold potato chips loose from glass cases or what?

Barrels. By the time shoppers reached the bottom the chips were stale and broken, the very problem the first sealed bags set out to solve.

In the 1920s, Frank Smith sold his crisps around London in greaseproof bags with what tucked inside?

A twist of salt. The pinch of salt came in a little paper wrap for buyers to sprinkle on themselves, and Smith's crisps are still sold that way today as Salt & Shake.

Which Irish company is widely credited with the world's first flavoured crisp, cheese and onion, in the 1950s?

Tayto. Joe 'Spud' Murphy's employee Seamus Burke experimented on little more than a kitchen table until the boss approved, and the flavour was soon a hit at home and abroad.

Smith's answered its rivals' cheese and onion with which flavour, launched nationally in 1967?

Salt and vinegar. Smith's tried the flavour out first through Tudor, its subsidiary on Tyneside, before taking it nationwide.

Which flavour, hailed in the trade press in 1955, was among the first seasoned potato chips sold in the United States?

Barbecue. An industry magazine called 'Bar-B-Q' seasoning the most sensational new development in the business, and sour cream and onion arrived beside it as America's other early flavour.

In the 1920s, Laura Scudder's workers took home sheets of what to iron into sealed potato chip bags?

Wax paper. The women ironed three sides shut at home and the bags were filled and sealed at her plant near Los Angeles, so the chips reached shoppers crisp instead of stale.

Kettle-cooked potato chips get their hard crunch from being fried how?

In small batches. The slices are cut thicker and each batch fries in cooler oil, which gives a harder bite than chips from a continuous fryer.

Which brand, started in 1980 by a man who sold his auto-parts business, popularised kettle-cooked chips in the US?

Cape Cod. Steve Bernard spent $3,000 on a cast-iron slicer, took a week's crash course in chip making and opened in a small shop in Hyannis on the Fourth of July.

In Britain and Ireland, what does the word 'chips' refer to?

French fries. Hence fish and chips: over there the thin fried slices are called crisps, a word that Pringles also uses on its American cans.

Which cereal maker bought Pringles in 2012 for about $2.7 billion?

Kellogg's. It swooped in after an earlier sale to Diamond Foods, the owner of Kettle Chips, fell apart amid questions over that company's accounts.

Which company launched Pringles in 1968?

Procter & Gamble. The soap giant knew edible oils from making Crisco, and set a chemist to work on a chip that would not turn up greasy, stale or broken.

The saddle shape of a Pringle is known mathematically as what?

A hyperbolic paraboloid. The double curve lets every crisp nest on the next, so they stack unbroken in a tube, the cure its designer wanted for bags of greasy, broken chips.

What last wish did Pringles can designer Fredric Baur leave his family?

Burial in one of his cans. His children laughed when he first raised the idea in the 1980s, but after he died in 2008 they placed some of his ashes in a Pringles can in the grave.

One theory says Pringles were named after what?

A street in suburban Cincinnati. Two of the firm's advertising staff are said to have lived on Pringle Drive, though a rival theory credits a Mark Pringle whose potato patent the company had cited.

Herman Lay started out in 1932 selling potato chips from what?

His Ford Model A. He was a route salesman for an Atlanta chip maker, and within a few years he had bought the ailing company and put his own name on the bags.

Which Wizard of Oz star was the face of Lay's potato chip adverts in the 1960s?

Bert Lahr. The man who played the Cowardly Lion became the brand's first celebrity spokesman once the newly merged Frito-Lay began selling its chips coast to coast.

In Mexico, PepsiCo sells its Lay's potato chips under which long-established local brand name?

Sabritas. PepsiCo bought the Mexican snack maker in the 1960s and, as with Walkers in Britain, kept the trusted local name on the bag instead of Lay's.

Which Lay's sub-brand, sold in a tall canister, was launched to compete with Pringles?

Lay's Stax. Frito-Lay took on Pringles in 2003 with a look-alike stacked crisp, swapping the rival's cardboard tube for a moulded plastic canister.

Walkers was founded in the 1940s in which English city, home to the world's largest crisp plant?

Leicester. Founder Henry Walker had moved there from Mansfield in the 1880s to take over a shop, and the firm never left: its plant now gets through 800 tonnes of potatoes a day.

What trade was the Walker family in before it founded Walkers crisps?

Butchery. Post-war meat rationing left the shop with nothing to sell by mid-morning, so the firm tried crisps instead, at first cut by hand and cooked in a fish fryer.

Which footballer did Walkers sign in 1994 to front its crisp adverts?

Gary Lineker. The joke was that a player so famously nice would steal crisps from children, and Walkers even put his name on a flavour, Salt & Lineker.

One of Ireland's best-known crisp brands became such a fixture that in 2010 its owner opened what?

A theme park. It opened near Ashbourne in County Meath with the brand's name over the gate, and kept it for a dozen years before being renamed Emerald Park.

Which brand overtook Smith's as Britain's top crisp in the 1960s?

Golden Wonder. The Scottish firm built giant modern factories and won over the north of Britain, and forty years later its bosses were still vowing to win the number-one spot back.

Which US state sued Frito-Lay and other chip makers in 2005 for failing to warn buyers about a frying by-product?

California. Its Proposition 65 demands warnings on anything containing a listed carcinogen, and in a 2008 settlement the chip makers agreed to cut the chemical's level in their products instead.

Which Pennsylvania snack brand began when a 21-year-old bought a tiny chip company in 1946?

Herr's. Jim Herr's sales averaged about $30 a week at first and he worked out of a vacated tobacco shed, yet the business grew to sell more than $100 million a year.

Kettle Brand, a pioneer of thick-cut 'hand-cooked' chips, was founded in which north-western US state?

Oregon. Its founder began by selling roasted nuts from the back of his van, and about a decade later the company carried its thick-cut chips across the Atlantic to Britain.

Which flavour is a distinctively Canadian potato chip variety?

Ketchup. Canada calls them its signature snack, yet nobody is sure who made them first: one journalist's three-month hunt for the inventor ended without an answer.

The 2002 potato chip health scare concerned which chemical formed by frying at high heat?

Acrylamide. Swedish scientists found it in fried potatoes and set off alarm around the world, though Cancer Research UK now files the fear that burnt food causes cancer under myths.

PepsiCo said in 2010 it would make Lay's healthier by redesigning what?

The salt crystals. Its 'designer salt' was shaped and sized so that less sodium goes down with each chip, with the aim of taking a quarter of the salt out of Lay's Classic.

What was the fat substitute in some 1990s fat-free chips, notorious for causing digestive trouble?

Olestra. It passed through the body undigested, taking vitamins with it, and the Wow! chips Frito-Lay built around it in 1998 had to carry a warning about cramps.

Which baked corn snack did critic Tanya Gold insist, in a 2020 review, 'is absolutely not a crisp'?

Monster Munch. Gold's review dug up its first name, The Prime Monster, a pun on the prime minister of 1977 that lasted only a year before the snack was renamed.

Walkers marked striker Jamie Vardy's record scoring run in 2015 with a limited-edition packet punningly named what?

Vardy Salted. He had scored in eleven Premier League games in a row, beating Ruud van Nistelrooy's record of ten, and his unfancied club went on to win the title that season.

Which Japanese company is one of the country's two major chip makers, alongside Koikeya?

Calbee. The name joins 'cal' from calcium and 'bee' from vitamin B1, the nutrients its founder wanted to put into the sweets he made in post-war Hiroshima.

A 2004 British salt survey found that a bag of ready-salted crisps holds less salt than a bowl of which cereal?

Cornflakes. A typical bowl had more than twice a crisp packet's salt, yet tastes less salty because the salt is locked inside the flake instead of dusted on the surface.

Walkers sells its cheese and onion crisps in which colour of packet, the reverse of most British brands?

Blue. Rivals keep blue for their vinegar flavour and put cheese and onion in green, and so many shoppers believe Walkers once swapped the two that the firm has had to deny it.

Which slogan became Lay's best-known line after the 1961 Frito merger?

Betcha can't eat just one. Frito-Lay began using the dare in 1963 and built years of television adverts around people trying, and failing, to stop at a single chip.

Which sci-fi author and mechanical engineer helped build the machine that cooks Pringles?

Gene Wolfe. Long before The Book of the New Sun made his name he was a food-industry engineer, and worked out how to fry the moulded potato shapes before they dropped onto the belt to be canned.

Pringles' maker told a British court in 2008 they were not crisps, hoping to escape what?

Value added tax. The firm said a Pringle is only 42% potato, with a shape 'not found in nature', and it won, until the Court of Appeal ruled a year later that the tax was due after all.

Walkers fills its crisp bags with which gas instead of air to keep them fresh?

Nitrogen. Oxygen would turn the oil rancid, whereas nitrogen leaves the crisps alone and cushions them from crushing; Walkers took it up in the 1990s along with foil bags.

Which Pennsylvania snack maker began in 1921 in the tiny home kitchen of a couple named William and Salie?

Utz. Salie cooked the chips and William delivered them to local grocers, and the firm stayed so low-key that in 2015 a word of praise from Warren Buffett set off takeover rumours.

What did PepsiCo India do weeks after suing farmers over its Lay's potato?

Dropped the lawsuits. In 2019 it had sought heavy damages from farmers in Gujarat over a variety called FC5, and backed down after protests by farm unions and talks with the government.

Which first name did Pringles adopt for its moustachioed mascot after a Wikipedia prank had invented it?

Julius. Two students slipped the made-up name Julius Pringles into the online encyclopedia in 2006, it spread unchallenged for years, and in 2013 the brand's owner trademarked it and made it real.

A puppet from Jim Henson's 1969 adverts for Munchos crisps later became which Sesame Street character?

Cookie Monster began as Arnold, a creature who craved the snack in Frito-Lay's commercials. Jim Henson performed him at first, and Frank Oz took over in later ads.

Potato chip collector Myrtle Young got a famous TV fright when which talk show host pretended to eat one?

Johnny Carson pretended to crunch one of her prized chips while her back was turned on The Tonight Show. In 1999 TV Guide named it the funniest moment ever on television.

National Potato Chip Day falls each year on which date, better known to maths fans as Pi Day?

March 14 is written 3/14 in the United States, matching the first three digits of pi. The date is also Albert Einstein's birthday.

A Welsh pub landlord launched crisps in 1981 that claimed, as a joke, to taste of which animal?

Hedgehog crisps held only pork fat and herbs, so the Office of Fair Trading took Phillip Lewis to court in 1982. He agreed to relabel them as hedgehog 'flavour' crisps.

After selling his stake in Tyrrells crisps, farmer William Chase launched his own brand of which spirit?

Vodka was the farmer's next venture: he put the proceeds into Chase Vodka, distilled from potatoes grown on his own land.

Martin's potato chips, made in Pennsylvania since 1941, were once served aboard which famous aircraft?

Air Force One carried Martin's chips during the terms of Bill Clinton and George W. Bush. Harry and Fairy Martin founded the company, which still sells mainly close to home.

Hobbyists turn empty Pringles cans into homemade 'cantennas' designed to boost which kind of signal?

Wi-Fi range was the goal, but the Pringles tube is too narrow to boost a 2.4 GHz signal by a useful amount. At 5 GHz it would be about the right size.

Which American baked dish of egg noodles and canned mushroom soup is often topped with crushed potato chips?

Tuna casserole appeared in a 1952 Campbell's book of recipes built on canned soup. Breadcrumbs and fried onions are other common crunchy toppings.

Chicago's Leonard Japp renamed his Mrs. Japp's potato chips as Jays in response to which event?

The attack on Pearl Harbor in 1941 turned the family name into a liability amid anti-Japanese feeling. The chips were rebranded to avoid the sound-alike word.

Charles Spence won an Ig Nobel Prize for showing that Pringles seem fresher when what is changed?

The crunch sound decided how fresh the crisps seemed: altering its pitch and volume altered the verdict. It was the first experiment to show that noise can change how food tastes.

Protesters in 2018 posted empty crisp packets to Walkers, prompting which organisation to plead for envelopes?

Royal Mail was obliged by law to deliver the loose packets to a freepost address, but each one had to be sorted by hand. A recycling scheme for the bags followed three months later.

Which nursery rhyme character gives his name to a potato chip brand founded in Maine in 1947?

Humpty Dumpty chips, with the egg himself as the logo, spread from Maine into Quebec and Atlantic Canada. Flavours have included sour cream and clam.

Potato chips in Germany traditionally came in just two varieties: plain salted and which red spice flavour?

Paprika chips are sometimes labelled 'ungarisch', meaning Hungarian, and the same two-flavour tradition held in Belgium and the Netherlands.

Norishio, a potato chip flavour sold in Japan, pairs salt with which ingredient from the sea?

Seaweed, in the form of nori, sits beside consommé, wasabi, plum and mayonnaise among the potato chip flavours sold in Japan.

A 1975 US ruling let Pringles keep the word 'chips' only if the label said they were made from what?

Dried potatoes had to be named because rival makers complained that a snack pressed from dough was no true chip. Pringles ended up marketed as potato crisps instead.

Laura Scudder's potato chip company is credited as the first food firm to print what on its bags?

A freshness date on every bag backed up her sealed packaging. Scudder also pressed on when male agents refused to insure her delivery truck, finding a woman who would.

Which Swahili word for 'lion' is the name of a South African potato chip brand launched in 1957?

Simba chips, with a male lion as mascot, were launched by the Greyvensteyn family, who had already made a success of Ouma Rusks.

Which crisp flavour, named after a retro seafood starter, was Britain's second most popular in 2004?

Prawn cocktail crisps held a 16% share of the British market that year, a spin-off from the starter's ubiquity on restaurant menus.

Which sugary flavour of Haitai potato chip set off a nationwide craze in South Korea in 2014?

Honey butter chips went viral on social media within months of their August 2014 launch. A similar version had failed to catch on in Japan two years earlier.

Which Canadian chip flavour, made by Quebec's Yum Yum in 1978, shares its name with a fully topped pizza?

All dressed chips blend several classic seasonings in one bag. A big American brand began selling them in the United States only decades later.

Thick 'Hawaiian style' kettle chips reached mainland America in 1980, inspired by a potato chip from which island?

Maui kept the old batch method alive after big makers switched to continuous fryers, and its chip inspired a start-up on the mainland.

Better Made potato chips, founded in 1930 by two Sicilian immigrants, is a hometown icon of which US city?

Detroit counts the yellow-and-red bags among its icons, alongside its own style of pizza and Coney Island hot dogs. Better Made is the last local chip brand still based there.

Frito-Lay, the maker of Lay's potato chips, has its North American headquarters in Plano in which state?

Texas ties run deep: the Frito Company moved its headquarters to Dallas for the central location and supply of raw materials, long before it joined forces with Herman Lay.

Funeral potatoes, a cheesy bake often topped with crushed potato chips, is tied to which religious community?

Mormons spread the dish through the church's Relief Society, which served it at gatherings and printed it in cookbooks. It remains closely tied to Utah.

The 1950s American craze for potato chips and dip owed much to adverts for which brand's instant onion soup mix?

Lipton's campaign showed hosts how to stir the dehydrated mix into a dip recipe, just as suburban styles of entertaining were changing.

The potato behind every chip was first domesticated near Lake Titicaca in Bolivia and which neighbouring country?

Peru and Bolivia share the lake where farmers tamed the potato some 7,000 to 10,000 years ago. The Andes still hold about 3,000 varieties.

Which football star lent his surname to a punning 1990s Walkers crisp flavour based on cheese and onion?

Michael Owen became 'Cheese & Owen' on limited-edition packets that carried his likeness. A fellow striker got the same treatment on a salted variety.

In 1938 Herman Lay bought the Barrett Food Company, a potato chip maker based in which Southern city?

Atlanta was home to the snack maker Lay had served as a travelling salesman. He renamed the business after himself, having first set up on his own with a $100 loan.

Which Pennsylvania potato chip maker, founded in Berwick in 1921, uses the stylised eye of an owl as its logo?

Wise chose an owl mascot as a play on founder Earl Wise's surname, and the bird's eye survives as the logo. The company also makes Cheez Doodles.

Alongside sealed bags, the invention of which transparent film helped make potato chips a mass-market product?

Cellophane joined the hand-ironed bag pioneered in 1920s Monterey Park, which cut down on crumbling and kept the chips crisp for longer.

Which Irish airline added a crisp sandwich pack to its in-flight menu in 2015?

Aer Lingus sold the pack for about a year, serving a snack that Ireland and Britain also know as a crisp sarnie or crisp butty.

Chocolate-covered potato chips, known locally as 'chippers', are a party favourite especially in which US state?

North Dakota's taste for them centres on Grand Forks, where Widman's Candy and home cooks have made 'chippers' for many years.

Which legendary Alabama football coach was one of the most famous spokesmen for Golden Flake potato chips?

Bear Bryant fronted a brand born in a Birmingham grocery store basement in the 1920s, when it still traded as Magic City Foods.

Which kettle chip brand began on an Ontario potato farm and made its debut at a local potato festival in 1987?

Miss Vickie's is named after co-founder Vickie Kerr, who adapted a recipe handed down by her mother. The first batches sold out at the Alliston Potato Festival.

Kettle Foods opened its British branch in Norwich in 1988 inside a converted factory that once made what?

Shoes gave way to crisps after a motorcycle trip taken by founder Cameron Healy and his son. The branch moved to a newly built factory five years later.

In the north of which country are potato chips sometimes affectionately known as 'chippies'?

New Zealand shops still label them plain 'chips', a word that there, as in Australia, also covers hot fried potatoes.

Mary Randolph's 1824 cookbook, an early American source for potato chips, is named after housewives of which state?

Virginia lends its name to The Virginia House-Wife. N.K.M. Lee's Cook's Own Book followed with a chip recipe of its own in 1832.

Charles Chips, once delivered to American doorsteps in tins, took their name from a street in which city?

Baltimore's Charles Street supplied the name when a distributor began packing Effie Musser's chips in tins in 1942. The Mussers sold the business in 1991.

When Pringles launched in 1968, the full product name described the potato chips with which playful adjective?

Newfangled was later dropped along with the word chips, after rival makers objected that Pringles are pressed from dough, not sliced.

Smith's adverts in 1980s Australia starred the Gobbledok, a chip-obsessed mascot of what kind?

An alien in the mould of E.T. and ALF, the Gobbledok arrived in the late 1980s. Smith's had been frying crisps in Australia since 1931.

Seabrook, the crisp maker said to owe its name to a photo shop clerk's slip, is based in which Yorkshire city?

Bradford has been home since Charles Brook founded the firm in 1945. The clerk is said to have written 'Seabrook' instead of 'C. Brook' on a roll of film.

Mikesell's, long billed as America's oldest continuously operating potato chip company, began in 1910 selling what?

Dried beef and sausage came first for Daniel W. Mikesell in Dayton, Ohio, but he soon turned to frying chips. The brand marked its 100th year in 2010.

Old Dutch Foods, which has made potato chips for Canada in Winnipeg since 1954, began in which US state?

Minnesota's Carl Marx picked the name because the Dutch were associated with cleanliness and quality. The firm started in St. Paul and is now based in Roseville.

Which smoky wood flavour gives its name to the thin potato sticks popular across Canada?

Hickory Sticks are a shoestring cousin of the chip. Potato sticks were first packed in sealed steel cans, before makers switched to cheaper canisters in the 1960s.

Which long-running British comic strip character lends his name to an American brand of corn and potato 'fries'?

Andy Capp's fries have carried the comic strip character's name and likeness under licence since 1971, when GoodMark Foods created the snack.

William Chase, the farmer who founded Tyrrells crisps in 2002, refused to supply them to which supermarket chain?

Tesco had long been at odds with Chase over stocking his potatoes, and he blamed big supermarkets for the collapse of his earlier farming business.

Which hockey great joined Eric Lindros in the advert that relaunched Canada's Hostess potato chips as Lay's?

Mark Messier fronted the switch after Hostess, Canada's leading chip brand for many years, gave way to the Lay's banner in 1996.

Which country sells potato chips as 'Pommes Chips', while its German-speaking neighbours say 'Kartoffelchips'?

Switzerland stands apart from Austria and Germany, where the long word is often shortened to plain 'Chips', said much as in English.

Kazuo Koike, whose firm Koikeya first mass-produced potato chips in Japan, first tasted them where?

A pub of the kind called an izakaya served Koike his first potato chips while he was already in the snack trade. Koikeya has since sold flavours meant for breakfast, such as toast and milk.

Pringles first went on sale in 1968 in which Midwestern state, where an Evansville grocery advert called them new?

Indiana was the first market, and the earliest known advert ran in an Evansville newspaper that October. By 1975 the stackable snack was on sale across most of the country.