The term “chocolate chip” first appeared in the late 1800s.
The name referred to the shape of an English tea biscuit. Soon after, “chocolate chips” were a popular confection commonly found in candy shops, consisting of a form of molasses covered in chocolate. It wasn’t until the 1930s that Ruth Wakefield of Whitman, Massachusetts, a trained cook who ran the kitchen of the Toll House restaurant, chopped up some chocolate and added it to her Butter Drop Do cookies, which is believed to be the genesis of Tollhouse Cookies, and chocolate chips as we’ve come to know them.