<P> A potato chip or crisp is a thin slice of potato that has been deep fried or baked until crunchy . Potato chips are commonly served as a snack, side dish, or appetizer . The basic chips are cooked and salted; additional varieties are manufactured using various flavorings and ingredients including herbs, spices, cheeses, other natural flavors, artificial flavors and additives . </P> <P> Potato chips are a predominant part of the snack food and convenience food market in Western countries . The global potato chip market generated total revenues of US $16.49 billion in 2005 . This accounted for 35.5% of the total savory snacks market in that year ($46.1 billion). </P> <P> The earliest known recipe for potato chips is in William Kitchiner's cookbook The Cook's Oracle, first published in 1817, which was a bestseller in England and the United States . The 1822 edition's version of recipe 104 is called "Potatoes fried in Slices or Shavings" and reads "peel large potatoes, slice them about a quarter of an inch thick, or cut them in shavings round and round, as you would peel a lemon; dry them well in a clean cloth, and fry them in lard or dripping". Early recipes for potato chips in the United States are found in Mary Randolph's Virginia House - Wife (1824), and in N.K.M. Lee's Cook's Own Book (1832), both of which explicitly cite Kitchiner . </P> <P> However, a legend associates the creation of potato chips with Saratoga Springs, New York, decades later . By the late nineteenth century, a popular version of the story attributed the dish to George Crum, a half - black, half - Native American cook at Moon's Lake House, who was trying to appease an unhappy customer on 24 August 1853 . The customer kept sending his French - fried potatoes back, complaining that they were too thick, too "soggy," and / or not salted well enough . Frustrated, Crum personally sliced several potatoes extremely thin, fried the potato slices to a crisp, and seasoned them with extra salt . To Crum's surprise, the customer loved them . They soon came to be called "Saratoga Chips," a name that persisted into at least the mid-twentieth century . A version of this story popularized in a 1973 national advertising campaign by St. Regis Paper Company, which manufactured packaging for chips, said that Crum's customer was Cornelius Vanderbilt . Crum was already renowned as a chef at the time, and by 1860, he owned his own lakeside restaurant, which he called Crum's House . </P>

Who invented potato chips and when was it invented