In 1853 at Moon's Lake House resort in Saratoga Springs, New York, the cook George Crum reportedly invented potato chips in response to a customer who complained that his French-fried potatoes were too thick. Crum sliced potatoes paper-thin, fried them to a crisp, and salted them heavily, creating an unexpected sensation that became known as "Saratoga Chips" and spread rapidly across the United States. Whether or not the apocryphal customer-complaint story is entirely accurate, potato chips were indeed popularized at Saratoga Springs in the 1850s and represent one of the earliest examples of a snack food designed primarily for pleasure rather than nutrition.

The potato chip's invention coincided with the emergence of a distinctly American vernacular food culture that would influence poets from Walt Whitman onward, who celebrated the democratic abundance of American foodways in "Leaves of Grass." The chip's transformation of a humble ingredient through frying and salting became a metaphor in later American poetry for the alchemy of popular culture, appearing in works by poets like William Carlos Williams who found poetic significance in ordinary American foods and their preparation.