How Everyday Accidents Shaped the World’s Most Useful Inventions

The traditional Saratoga story has George Crum in a kitchen, a picky customer at a table, and a plate of potatoes that kept coming back. The complaint, according to the familiar version, was thickness. Crum sliced the potatoes extremely thin, fried them crisp, salted them, and sent them out. Instead of being taught a lesson, the customer loved them. Food historians still debate how exact that tale is, so it is safer to treat it as the best-known origin story rather than courtroom-level proof.