 Sierra Pardus judges an entrant in the Chronogram bake-off |
Standing on my tiptoes on the seat of a kitchen chair, I assembled all the ingredients listed on the back of the yellow bag of chips. I'd helped my mom make cookies enough to know how to measure everything and I had just started mixing it all together with a big wooden spoon when my chair tipped over backwards sending me and the blue ceramic bowl flying through the air.
My pediatrician was putting stitches in my chin when my dad arrived at the emergency room to relieve the babysitter. By the time we reached home, my mom, still in her party clothes, was pulling a batch of cookies out of the oven.
Maybe the drama of the night had heightened all of my senses. Or maybe it was a side effect of the Tylenol 3 the doctor gave me. I can't explain it, but to this day, those were the best chocolate chip cookies I've ever eaten.
Since then, I've been trying to make a batch of chocolate chip cookies half as good. I have spent a lifetime looking for the perfect recipe. And I've found a lot of great recipes along the way. Too many, in fact.
The problem is every time I find a recipe I like, I find another that's even better. And if that one's better, who's to say that the very best one isn't still out there? I'm like a girl who goes on a lot of wonderful first dates but isn't ready to commit to any of them.
It seems as if every pastry chef in the country has tried to make the chocolate-chip cookie his or her own. |
But a girl has to settle down sometime. So I decided to conduct an experiment, a blind taste test that would determine, once and for all, which of the thousands of chocolate-chip cookies recipes people liked the best. And on April 3, with the help of the Culinary Institute of America, a couple dozen friends and 25 pounds of bleached flour, I got my answer.
The chocolate-chip cookie is as American as apple pie. In 1930, Massachusetts innkeeper, restaurateur, and housewife Ruth Wakefield started making chocolate cookies before she realized she was out of baker's chocolate. With no time to run to the store, she threw a chopped up candy bar into the cookie dough thinking it would melt during baking. It didn't melt and the chocolate-chip cookie was born.
Ruth's cookie was a big hit and soon people were coming from all over New England to get their hands on them. The recipe was even published in a Boston newspaper. Meanwhile Nestlé's saw sales of their semi-sweet chocolate bar increase dramatically. In exchange for allowing her recipe to be printed on the back of the bar, Wakefield received an undisclosed sum of money and a lifetime supply of chocolate.
 Nestlé’s Toll House morsels |
Every chocolate-chip cookie that followed were variations on Wakefield's theme. All of the recipes contain the same basic ingredients: flour, sugar, eggs, some kind of fat, a little salt, vanilla extract, baking soda or powder, and chocolate chips. But a small change in the ingredients' ratio or a simple substitution produces a radically different cookie.
And don't get me started on additions. It seems as if every pastry chef in the country has tried to make the chocolate-chip cookie his or her own by throwing in a little something extra. The results range from the sublime, (a couple teaspoons of hazelnut oil, a dollop of sour cream) to the bizarre (dried apricots.)
We decided to limit our taste test to chocolate-chip cookie recipes that fall into the traditional category. As for nuts, we left them out entirely. Nuts are the third rail of any chocolate-chip-cookie discussion; some people insist on them, while others find the very idea blasphemous, and never the twain shall meet. Culinary Institute of America baking instructor Susan Wysocki helped me select eight recipes that fit the bill.
The first recipe we chose, the Neiman-Marcus recipe, is movie star famous. For years people have been forwarding an e-mail containing the story of a woman who asked a waitress at the Neiman-Marcus Café for their chocolate-chip-cookie recipe only to discover a month later that she had been charged $250 for it. Outraged, the woman decided to get even with the department store by giving the recipe away to everyone she knew.
The story is apocryphal. In fact, it made the rounds in the 1970s with Mrs. Fields Cookies in the villain's role. But in spite of its shaky provenance the Neiman-Marcus recipe is often cited as "the only chocolate-chip-cookie recipe."
 CIA students Anna Geer and Aleishe Baska mixing ingredients |
The other recipes we tested were the Doubletree Hotel's, America's Test Kitchen's, cookbook author Ann Hodgeman's, Nestlé's Toll House Cookie, cakey chocolate-chip cookies (a recipe of unknown provenance I've been carting around on a scrap of paper for years), and two recipes from 101 Perfect Chocolate Chip Cookies by Gwen Steege: Colleen's Chocolate-Chip Cookies and Ric's Chocolate-Chip Cookies.
Even though it was Sunday the student chefs arrived in their school clothes—freshly pressed chef's whites and tall paper hats. As they preheated the walk-in, closet-sized ovens, Wysocki carefully instructed them that, in spite of the half-million dollars worth of state-of-the-art equipment in the room, they should prepare each recipe to the letter, the way a cookie-baking novice at home would.
The difference between a home cook and a pastry chef became quickly apparent when one of the students realized the recipes called for portions of flour and sugar in cups rather than ounces. A student was quickly dispatched to find measuring cups. The kitchen was otherwise meticulously equipped, with a stack of cookie sheets that reached the ceiling and enough Kitchen Aid stand mixers for a small army.
The room was quiet as the students measured, mixed, and baked. They took the assignment seriously and seemed as eager for the results as I was. The last few batches of cookies were just coming out of the ovens when our judges started arriving.
The tasting panel consisted of Tim Ryan, the president of the CIA, and his family; CIA chef/instructors Kate Cavotti and Laura Dreesen-Pardus; "60 Minutes Wednesday" correspondent (and my husband) Steve Hartman; bakery owners and CIA grads Jarek and Susan Wysocki; Alice and Sophie Andrews; Dennis and Vicki Kosavac and their son Stephen; and state Assemblyman Patrick Manning.
While the judges waited in the adjacent dining room, the cookies were plated and the milk was poured. I had one of the pastry students assign each cookie recipe an identifying letter (A through H) so even I wouldn't know which cookie I was tasting. Each judge was to sample each cookie, taking whatever notes they felt necessary. Once they'd decided on a favorite they were to sign their name of the piece of paper bearing the cookies letter. For the next half and hour, the judges sat in small groups eating cookies and talking about cookies. The talked amongst themselves about things like chip distribution and mouth feel.
 CIA bakery instructor Susan Wysocki and students test to see if cookies are done |
When it was time to vote, no one had a problem choosing a favorite. Cookie H was the clear winner, getting twice as many votes as it nearest competitor. "That," one of the pastry chefs said, "is what a chocolate-chip cookie is supposed to taste like." Everyone in the room was anxious to find out which cookie had won, so without further ado I consulted the master list—and cringed.
Cookie H, the cookie that won in a landslide, was made from the Nestlé's Toll House Cookie recipe. The one on the back of the bag. Needless to say, many jaws hit the floor when I announced the winner.
I spent the next few days in a funk, trying to figure out what went wrong. Had we given the judges too many choices? Should we have devised some sort of elaborate scoring system that gave points for balance, texture, and richness? Were the judges morons?
 Cookies after being judged. |
According to Stein, our taste test was tragically flawed. We gave the judges too many options and didn't randomize the order in which the cookies were eaten. But Stein wasn't sure that a more scientific study would have produced different results.
It turns out that the food we grew up with tends to influence our preferences for the rest of our lives. And the influence is even greater when the food is linked to memories that illicit strong emotion. In other words, if your mom baked Toll House cookies for you while you were at the hospital getting stitches, you're probably going to be a fan for life.