Earliest Known Recipe for Ready Salted Crisps Discovered in 200 Years Old Cookbook

Earliest known recipe for ready salted crisps is discovered in 200-year-old cookbook written by 19th century celebrity chef

• The 1817 first edition book has a recipe for 'potatoes fried in slices or shavings'
• The cookbook says to serve the crisps with a 'little salt sprinkled over them' 

The earliest known recipe for ready salted crisps has been discovered in a 19th century cookbook.

The instructions on how to make 'potatoes fried in slices or shavings' were written in the 1817 first edition of The Cook's Oracle by William Kitchiner.

Despite being more than 200 years old, the simple recipe tells the reader how to create a snack indistinguishable from modern day ready salted crisps.

Mr Kitchiner, who lived from 1775 to 1827, was an early celebrity chef whose book was a bestseller in both Britain and the United States. 

He tells the reader to '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'.

The earliest known recipe for crisps has been found in a book by William Kitchiner, an early celebrity chef from the 19th century

The 206-year-old cookbook contains a number of methods to cook potatoes 

The cookbook says to 'Peel large potatoes, and slice them the thickness of a two penny piece, dry them well in a clean cloth, flour them and fry them in lard' (stock image)

The potatoes should then be dried well in a clean cloth, floured and fried in lard.

Mr Kitchener writes: 'Take care that your lard and frying pan are quite clean, put it on a quick fire, watch it, and as soon as it boils, and the lard is still, put in the slices of potato, and keep moving them until they are crisp.

THE FULL RECIPE 

Peel large potatoes, and slice them the thickness of a two penny piece, dry them well in a clean cloth, flour them and fry them in lard.

Take care that your lard and frying pan are quite clean, put it on a quick fire, watch it, and as soon as it boils, and the lard is still, put in the slices of potato, and keep moving them until they are crisp.

Take them up and lay them to drain on a sieve, send them up with a very little salt sprinkled over them.

'Take them up and lay them to drain on a sieve, send them up with a very little salt sprinkled over them.'

His book also contains 11 ketchup recipes, including for with cucumber, oysters and mussels.

The first edition copy of Cook's Oracle has emerged for sale from a British private collection for £600 with London-based Forum Auctions.

The anonymous vendor has owned it for several decades.

Justin Phillips, specialist at Forum Auctions, said: 'The present work contains one of the earliest recipes for what we now know as 'crisps'.

'Perhaps it could even be the genesis of the crisp, which is a British institution and one of the nation's favourite snacks.

'I have worked in auctions the auction trade for 27 years and have not seen a first edition of this book, so it is quite rare.'

Crisps were first produced commercially by the Mikesell's Potato Chip Company in America in 1910.

The Smiths company, founded in London in 1920, added seasoning to their products, with flavoured crisps first appearing in the 1950s.

Britons now eat six billion packs of crisps a year, with Walkers using 800 tonnes of potatoes to produce 11 million bags daily.

The sale takes place on February 9.