Crisps (potato chips) are most famously linked to an American chef named George Crum , who is often credited with inventing them in 1853 in Saratoga Springs, New York, but earlier British recipes mean he probably popularised rather than truly “invented” them.

The classic George Crum story

  • In 1853, chef George Crum was working at Moon’s Lake House near Saratoga Springs, New York.
  • A picky customer kept sending back his fried potatoes, complaining they were too thick and not crispy enough.
  • In frustration, Crum sliced potatoes paper‑thin, fried them until very crisp, salted them heavily, and sent them out expecting the customer to hate them.
  • The customer loved them, ordered more, and the ultra‑thin fried potatoes became a hit at the restaurant, later known as “Saratoga chips.”

Earlier origins: British recipes

  • Long before 1853, a British cookbook, The Cook’s Oracle by William Kitchiner (1817), already described “potatoes fried in slices or shavings,” which are effectively early crisps.
  • This makes Kitchiner the first known writer to publish a crisp‑like recipe, even if he was not marketing them as a snack food in the modern sense.

So who “invented” crisps?

  • If the question is about the first recorded recipe , the credit goes to William Kitchiner in 1817 for documenting crisp‑like “potatoes fried in slices or shavings.”
  • If the question is about the famous origin story and commercial popularity , George Crum is the name most people cite, because his Saratoga chips turned thin, crispy potatoes into a fashionable restaurant specialty that spread across the United States.

From kitchen experiment to global snack

  • Historians note that while Crum did not truly invent the idea of thin fried potato slices, he (and those around him) played a key role in turning crisps into a recognisable, named product in the late 19th century.
  • Later entrepreneurs in the 1890s and early 1900s took the concept out of restaurants and into grocery stores, mass‑producing crisps and starting the modern snack industry.

TL;DR:

  • First known crisp‑style recipe: William Kitchiner, The Cook’s Oracle (1817).
  • Most famous inventor in popular lore: George Crum, Saratoga Springs chef, 1853.

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