Chocolate Chip Cookies In American Pop Culture

In a quaint Massachusetts town located 21 miles south of Boston, Ruth Wakefield, a baker who ran the esteemed Toll House restaurant, created the infamous chocolate chip cookie that people enjoy all around the world. In her 1938 cookbook titled “Tried and True,” Wakefield first displayed the crispy and chocolate chunk filled cookie as an accompaniment to ice cream. Due to the cookie’s sheer popularity, the recipe made an appearance the following year on Betty Crocker’s radio program, further cementing the cookie's reputation in American pop culture as the go-to cookie. Although chocolate chip cookies still almost unanimously reign supreme as America’s favorite cookie, there are still countless different ways to prepare them. An example of a dissimilarity can be found in the type

Both of these proteins possess their own unique properties, gliadin gives baked goods flexibility (meaning they can be stretched), and glutenin gives baked goods elasticity (meaning they can return to their original form after being stretched) (Anastopoulo, 1). Consequently, flour with more protein will allow for more gliadin and glutenin to form, and in turn, more strength and structure in a baked product. In all, chocolate chip cookies are an iconic dish in modern American culture. Developed in the late 1930’s in a cookbook by Ruth Wakefield, countless chocolate chip cookie recipes have sprung up in the past century, many with contrasting types of flour. However, not all flours are viable substitutes for one another, as they each have their own unique amount of protein. In other baked goods using high protein flours, results are more structural and gluten free. Conversely, baked goods using lower-protein flours yield more delicate and tender results. This is wholly due to the two proteins gliadin and glutenin, which make up