The World's First Potato Chip Flavor Is Still A UK Staple

In the present day, we're spoiled when it comes to potato chips: They're everywhere, and it seems like we've got an endless array of flavors, from barbecue to salt and vinegar to pizza-flavored Pringles. Potato chips probably first came about during the early or mid-19th century, although it took over 100 years before anybody came up with different flavors.

The first potato chip flavor popped up in Ireland during the 1950s, when the Tayto snack company introduced "cheese and onion" flavored chips—or "crisps," as they are called in the United Kingdom, where the term "chips" instead refers to french fries, i.e., the street food fish and chips. Cheese and onion crisps quickly became a hit, and many other flavors soon followed over the next several years: salt and vinegar, sour cream and onion, barbecue, and more. Nowadays in the 21st century, cheese and onion remains one of the most popular flavors of crisp in the U.K. (usually from the Walkers brand). Salt and vinegar crisps give cheese and onion a run for its money on occasion, and regular salted crisps are still popular as well.

The official invention of potato chip flavors is credited to Tayto owner Joe "Spud" Murphy and an employee named Seamus Burke, who first started seasoning their crisps with cheese and onions in 1954. Prior to that, potato chips were sold completely plain, although some sellers would include little packets of salt that you could use to season the chips yourself. Murphy and Burke's pre-seasoning strategy is now considered the normal way to sell the snack; there's no way you'd be salting the chips yourself unless you're making oven-baked potato chips.

Tayto originally sold its cheese and onion flavor alongside two other, very simple flavors it made from the same ingredients: plain crisps and cheese-flavored crisps. Soon, the company came up with the salt and vinegar flavor, which is made by spraying a thin coating of vinegar onto a starchy powder that is then added as a seasoning. Most of these early chip flavors were meant to mimic toppings you might put on actual potato dishes, and restaurant-quality baked potatoes still use shredded cheese, onions, and salt.

The United States had a different experience with flavored potato chips, which eventually became just as big of a hit as they did across the pond — and today the U.S. eats more potato chips than any other country, partly due to the wide availability of flavored chips. The first flavored potato chip flavor introduced in America was barbecue, made by Herr's potato chips in 1958. By the end of the 1970s, sour cream and onion also became popular in the U.S., somewhat emulating the original cheese and onion flavor.

If the first potato crisp flavor in the U.K. is still the most popular, does the same hold true for U.S. taste in potato chips? Not quite: The most popular U.S. chip flavor is plain, according to World Metrics, with barbecue coming in a distant No. 2. Sour cream and onion comes in third, so Americans aren't nearly as fond of onion seasoning in their chips, or much seasoning at all, besides the hefty amount of salt in plain potato chips. Instead of flavors, Americans have a big culture around dips (for both potato and tortilla chips), with a number of different potato chip dip ingredients from onion dip to ketchup.