No single person “invented cookies” in general, but we can point to two different “cookie inventions” people usually mean:

  1. the first cookies in history (no single inventor, very old), and
  2. the invention of the modern chocolate chip cookie (one known inventor).

Quick Scoop: Who Invented Cookies?

  • The idea of a small, sweet baked piece of dough goes back over 1,000 years, to ancient Persia around the 7th century, when sugar became more common and bakers started making small test cakes that evolved into early cookies.
  • From Persia, these early cookie-like treats spread to Europe through trade and the Crusades, gradually turning into many regional cookie traditions (like biscuits, shortbread, and more).
  • Because this happened slowly over centuries and across many cultures, there is no single named inventor of “cookies” as a whole.

When people ask “who invented cookies,” they’re often really thinking of the most famous modern cookie:

  • The classic chocolate chip cookie was created by American baker Ruth Graves Wakefield at the Toll House Inn in Massachusetts in the late 1930s.
  • She developed the recipe deliberately as a new dessert for her customers, and it became known as the Toll House chocolate chip cookie.

So, historically:

  • Cookies in general: ancient, no single inventor.
  • Chocolate chip cookies: invented by Ruth Graves Wakefield in the 1930s.

Information gathered from public forums or data available on the internet and portrayed here.