Earliest known recipe for crisps discovered in cook book printed over 200 years ago
THE earliest known recipe for crisps has been discovered — in a cookbook printed in 1817.
Experts spotted the step-by-step guide in a first edition of The Cook’s Oracle which is set to sell for £600.
It was written by William Kitchiner, a celebrity chef of his day, and is now rare despite being a best-seller in the UK and the US.
His recipe No 104 details how to make “potatoes fried in slices” — beginning with peeling large spuds before cutting them thickly.
They are then coated in flour, fried in lard or dripping and sprinkled with “a very little salt”.
The book, which also includes 11 recipes for ketchup, is to be sold by a private collector through London-based Forum Auctions.
Spokesman Justin Phillips said: “The present work contains one of the earliest recipes for what we now know as crisps.
“Perhaps it could even be the genesis of the crisp, a British institution!”
Crisps were first made commercially by the Mikesell’s Potato Chip Company in America in 1910.
Smith’s Crisps, which was founded in London in 1920, added seasoning and flavoured crisps appeared in the 1950s.
Brits now eat six billion packets a year.