Meet the Man Who Invented Potato Chips

Mr. Crum’s Potato Predicament
Written by Anne Renaud & Illustrated by Felicita Sala
Age Level: 3-7 Years
Published September 5, 2017

One for you, two for me.

George Crum was a Black - Native American chef who cooked his way to fame by frying up America’s favorite snack at his Saratoga Springs, NY restaurant, Crum’s Place. Legend has it that it all started when a highly eccentric and very particular customer came into the restaurant and ordered potatoes, then repeatedly rejected them for being too thick and too bland. Out of frustration and partly in jest, Crum took his sharpest knife and sliced the slimmest potatoes that he could, then fried them to a crisp and showered them with salt. To his surprise, the picky customer devoured every single one, and from then on Crum was putting a plateful of his famous “Saratoga Chips” on every table.

“George Crum loved to cook.
He fricasséed and flambéed, boiled and braised, poached and puréed.”

This is such a fun book to read aloud. The sentences are incredibly lyrical and roll off the tongue, each one bursting with onomatopoeias, rhymes, and alliteration. There are a lot of sophisticated vocabulary words throughout the book so it’s a great way to build your child’s word bank. To dig deeper into Crum’s biography and the potato chip’s origin, read the Author’s Note at the end which includes some great historical photographs.