All Over Albany

"Saratoga Chips will endure as long as there are spuds left to slice."

Wrong? We have no interest in being right. And we don't think George Crum -- or Katie Weeks -- would mind.

Amanda Hesser, writing in NYT Mag this past weekend, about the original Saratoga potato chip:

In "America Cooks," by the 1940s food writers Cora, Rose and Bob Brown, the trio declared: "A century ago, when Saratoga Springs was in its heyday as a fashionable resort, specialties from there swept the country, and one of them, Saratoga Chips, will endure as long as there are spuds left to slice." They were partly right. The recipe has endured, all right, but Saratoga vanished from the name. We now call them potato chips, and they've reached that late-mannerist "seasoning" stage, which has produced such atrocities as sour-cream-and-onion-flavored chips and even "cool ranch."

Hey, we're all about Saratoga getting its due -- but that stuff about the "atrocity" of sour-cream-and-onion is crazy talk. That is one delicious disaster.

Hesser's piece includes a 1904 recipe -- and a new take, developed by Dori Greenspan, which sounds like a Pringle.

A few years back, Saratoga author Mike Hare shared some of the origination myths of the Saratoga chip with AOA:

[George] Crum brought his sister, Katie Weeks, to work alongside him at Moon's. And it was Katie's kitchen experiment that, legend has it, led to one of our favorite salty, fried treats.

One day, Katie was peeling potatoes on the stove when a piece accidentally fell into a pot of boiling fat. She fished it out, put it briefly on a frying pan, then set it on a plate.

George tasted it, and liked it. A lot.

(There's also a more dramatic version.)

A company based in Saratoga started making "Moon Brand Saratoga Chips" a few years back. Has anyone tried them?

Earlier on AOA: Last year, Amy sampled chocolate potato chips from Isn't It Sweet in Albany.

(Thanks, Jess!)