How flavored crisps have invaded our supermarket shelves

>> Every day in Historically yours, David Castello-Lopes looks back on the origins of an object or a concept.

On Wednesday, he looks at flavored crisps, which have gradually invaded the shelves of our supermarkets.

And always enjoy a little more original tastes. 

"The success of the potato is touching. It is an ugly vegetable however, a sort of Elephant Man leprous from the kitchen garden, all twisted, without a defined shape, with a bad skin, and which is also sometimes full of small tumors that must be removed one by one, yet it is today the most consumed vegetable in the world.

This revenge, the potato owes a lot to one of its most delicious variations, the crisps, this potato cut into thin strips and fried in oil.

However, for a long time, there was only one version of crisps on sale in supermarkets, it was salt-flavored crisps.

But today, there's chips at all: taste bacon, cheese flavor, onion flavor,

.

And for the past fifteen years or so, I have even seen the flavors of crisps become more complex at a completely insane speed.

It started with braised chicken and bolognese flavored crisps, then, more recently, a number of masterpieces appeared that I started collecting, such as hamburger crisps or ham and butter sandwiches.

But I still have a question: in a ham and butter sandwich, there is ham, there is butter, but still, there is mostly bread.

So, to a certain extent, ham and butter sandwich crisps are like bread crisps.

A starch flavored with another starch… It's like rice flavored with pasta.

It is completely inception. 

The dazzling success of an Irish brand

What I wanted to know is where do these fragrant chips come from?

For example, do you know the Irish brand Tayto Mathieu?

Tayto was created in 1954 by a guy with a Mafia name called Joe Spud Murphy.

Why Tayto?

Because her young baby was pronouncing the word "potato", which means potato in English.

And Joe Spud Murphy found salt crisps boring.

Especially since at the time, the salt was not even incorporated, and you had to put it yourself on the chips.

And so he was like, "Come on, I wish my chips tasted of something."

And he invented a technique, which unfortunately, despite all my investigative power, I could not find the trace, but which probably must have involved maltodextrin.

Maltodextrin is a kind of floury thing that has the power to make oily substances sprinkle on.

For example, you have chorizo ​​juice, you mix it with maltodextrin, and it gives you chorizo ​​powder, and suddenly you can make chips that taste like chorizo.

The first flavor of crisps that Joe Spud Murphy created was cheese and onion crisps.

Of course, it was a hit, and today Tayto is a potato chip giant.

There is even a Tayto amusement park in Ireland.

But the question I'm asking myself today is why stop with ham and cheese or veal blanquette-flavored crisps?

We should go further.

How about “Autumn afternoon by Lake Como” flavored crisps, or crisps flavored with respect and confidence?

I took matters into my own hands, and I created the world's first containment-flavored crisps.

I have here a packet of unscented crisps, I add a few milliliters of hydroalcoholic gel, I cut a few pieces of protective mask in it, I shake, and here it is!

Enjoy your meal!"