Nugget Nation/Mac and Cheese Mania

Baker spent hours tinkering in his lab in Ithaca, New York. He and his team invented tasty foods. Chicken hot dogs! Chicken meatloaf! Chicken sandwich slices!

Baker was proudest of the chicken stick: a bite-size chunk of ground chicken coated with batter. He worked hard to come up with a recipe that wouldn’t fall apart when fried. No one had ever seen anything like it before. And that’s how the original nugget was born.

Baker and his team called their invention the “Chicken Crispie.” They published the recipe for anyone to copy for free. Yet their invention didn’t catch on—until nearly 20 years later, when McDonald’s was facing its burger crisis.

After the U.S. government put out its burger warning, leaders at McDonald’s knew they had to come up with a new menu item—and fast.

The company’s head chef tried some ideas. Chicken pot pie? Taste-testers wrinkled their noses. Bone-in fried chicken? KFC already did that. Onion nuggets? Just . . . no.

But wait: What about chicken nuggets?

McDonald’s leaders knew nuggets were a great idea. Lucky for them, the company had Baker’s Chicken Crispie recipe from years earlier. It helped them craft the perfect nugget.

In 1983, Chicken McNuggets launched in McDonald’s restaurants. They were a hit. Diners who had given up burgers fell in love with nuggets. Later, experts would learn that these deep-fried nuggets were no healthier than burgers. But by then, it was too late. The nugget had become an American classic.

Baker never made money off his most famous invention. But he achieved his goal: America turned into a nation of chicken eaters. Today, we gobble up more than 2.3 billion orders of chicken nuggets each year. And they aren’t just a fast-food item. They’re everywhere—cafeterias, kids’ menus, the grocery store.

So the next time you bite into a chicken nugget—or a tofu nugget—you can think of Baker.

The silverware sparkled. The candles glowed. Heavenly smells filled the dining room. It was February 1802, and President Thomas Jefferson was having a dinner party at the White House.

The president was known for serving tasty and exotic meals. Soon, the table was heaped with good food. Tender beef. Roast turkey. Colorful fruit. But that night, Jefferson was serving something extra special. It was a dish he had discovered in France: macaroni and cheese.

Today, Jefferson is famous for many things. He helped America break away from England and become its own country. He was our third president. But food history experts also give him credit for another big accomplishment: helping start America’s macaroni and cheese craze.

Jefferson wasn’t the first to enjoy mac and cheese. People have been pairing pasta with rich, gooey cheese for centuries. The first recipes were written in Italy in the 1300s, during the time of the knights. From there, the dish spread across Europe.

But back then, only the rich could eat mac and cheese. Kings and queens spooned it out of golden dishes. Most people could only dream of tasting such a fancy treat.

By the late 1700s, rich travelers were bringing mac and cheese to the U.S. Well-off Americans loved this luxurious food from Europe.

Still, it was many years before macaroni and cheese had its big breakthrough.

By the 1930s, U.S. cooks had started making macaroni and cheese with cheap American cheddar cheese instead of fancy Italian parmesan. Once a royal treat, mac and cheese had become a food almost anyone could afford. (Europe’s kings and queens would have been horrified.)

And in the 1930s, Americans needed affordable meals. The U.S. was in the middle of a dark time: the Great Depression. Millions of people were out of work. Mac and cheese was cheap and filling. It was the perfect meal for hard times. It grew popular in some parts of the country. But in others, it was still unknown.

A pasta salesman in St. Louis, Missouri, helped to change that. To sell his boxes of noodles, he used rubber bands to attach packets of Kraft grated cheese. Customers snapped up these “meal kits.”

Leaders at the Kraft cheese company heard about the salesman’s idea. They liked it! They hired the salesman. And they turned his creation into a new product: “Kraft Dinner,” a box of noodles with a packet of cheese inside.

To struggling families, Kraft Dinner seemed like a small miracle. A dinner for four people that you could make in minutes—and all for just 19 cents! In the first year alone, the company sold 8 million boxes.

Today, Kraft sells nearly a million boxes each day. Stacked on top of each other, those boxes would be 20 times higher than Mount Everest.

And whether from a box or homemade, macaroni and cheese is now beloved by people across the country. You can buy it at a corner store for $1. You can order it topped with lobster at a fancy restaurant. There’s even a National Macaroni and Cheese Day. (It’s July 14—start planning your celebration now.)

In other words, we’ve gone a little mac and cheese crazy. And it all began with Thomas Jefferson, who helped turn the little-known European dish into an all-American classic. 

Today, Kraft sells nearly a million boxes every day. Stacked on top of each other, those boxes would be 20 times higher than Mount Everest.

And whether from a box or homemade, mac and cheese is now loved by people across the country. You can buy it at a corner store for $1. You can order it topped with lobster at a fancy restaurant. There’s even a National Macaroni and Cheese Day. (It’s July 14. Start planning your celebration now.)

In other words, we’ve gone a little mac and cheese crazy. And it all began with Thomas Jefferson, who helped turn this European dish into an American classic.

This article was originally published in the September 2019 issue.