CLOONACOOL MAN INVENTED CHEESE & ONION CRISPS
A plaque and information boards were recently erected in Cloonacool in memory of Seamus Burke, 1918–1983, the genius behind cheese and onion crisps. John Bromley learned about Seamus and his invention of the now world-famous snack
A NUMBER of information boards and a plaque have recently been erected in the village of Cloonacool to commemorate a local claim to fame in the history of potato crisps. A local man, Seamus Burke, invented the flavouring for the famous cheese and onion Tayto crisps, which were the world’s first flavoured crisps.
Seamus was the third of six children born to Malachy Burke and his wife Agnes in Killala, Co. Mayo in 1918. The family moved to Cloonacool in 1922 and settled in the south Sligo village in a house next door to Brennan’s bar and shop. This house no longer exists. As he grew up, Seamus was very much part of the Cloonacool community and got involved in many local activities. It is believed, as a young man, he was the person who replaced the crosses on the local parish church.
Seamus went to secondary school at Summerhill College in Sligo, likely on the strength of a scholarship.
In 1938, at the age of 20, Seamus was a member of the local amateur drama group. His involvement is noted in a newspaper report of the time when a production undertaken by the group received rave reviews.
Seamus subsequently emigrated to England in the early 1940s. After a number of years working there, he later returned to Ireland and settled in Dublin. It was there in 1954 that be met and began to work for Joe Murphy.
Joe Murphy was a young entrepreneur with passion for business and a fondness for crisps. At that time potato crisps, which were then imported from the UK, had no flavour. The only seasoning provided at the time was a sachet of salt that came enclosed in each crisp packet. There are a number of stories of how and where potato crisps were first produced and different people are credited with coming up with the first crisp. One of the oldest known published recipes for crisps is by William Kitchiner, an optician who doubled up as a Georgianera celebrity chef in England. His book, A Cook’s Oracle, published in 1817, was a big hit in the UK and a young America. Kitchiner’s recipe – potatoes fried in slices or shavings – is for slivers of potato fried in “lard or dripping” and “served with a very little salt sprinkled over them”.
Over time different chefs came up with similar crisps in their restaurants and later crisps began to be sold in shops in waxed paper bags.
However, the fried thin slices of potato – known as crisps on this side of the Atlantic but chips in the US – were unflavoured. The nearest thing to flavouring came from the Smiths Potato Crisps Company, which was formed in 1920. They packaged a twist of salt with the crisps in greaseproof paper bags, which were sold around London.
The snack food grew in popularity but remained unseasoned until an important scientific development in the 1950s. English biochemists Archer Martin and Richard Synge received a Nobel Prize for inventing a process called partition chromatography in 1952 and scientists began to develop flavouring for foods. Joe Murphy always had a knack for spotting a gap in the market and, more importantly, filling it.
He had introduced a hoard of items to the Irish market (previous to Tayto) such as Ribena blackcurrant drink and ballpoint pens.
So in 1954 Murphy set up a snack food company, in just two rented rooms on O’Rahilly’s Parade, off Moore Street in Dublin, with initial set up costs of £500.
His employees included himself and eight others, and the use of a single van. One of his employees was Seamus Burke who was put in charge of creating a new flavour for Tayto crisps.
In a short history of Tayto that he wrote in 1969, Seamus Burke recalled that on June 4, 1954, Joe Murphy introduced him to his factory in O’Rahilly’s Parade. He wrote: “It was a dump but some of Mr Murphy’s enthusiasm must have rubbed off on me for when he asked me when could I start, I answered ‘now’,” Seamus recalled.
He went on: “I was handed a small booklet on how to make crisps and got to work. Like most people I thought it was easy – money for jam. 4d for a packet of crisps appeared like 4d for a spud. I soon discovered that 1cwt of spuds didn’t make 1cwt of crisps – in fact, 80% of weight was lost in the process. This became a very important factor in later years.
“The machinery at the time was primitive and the slicer was fed by hand – one potato at a time the slices dropped into a bath of water to be washed. They were then dried in a domestic spin dryer, which was designed for 6lbs of clothes but when loaded with wet spud slices very often took off from its moorings and flew around the room! Luckily, no one was ever hurt by it.
“The crisps were cooked in a small fish shop fryer – a few pound of slices at a time. They were flavoured, packed and sealed by hand. The sealing was done by gum and a brush and I felt on top of the world when on my second day we produced 35 tins of crisps, 18 packets in each tin, after nine hours of hard slogging!
“We soon found that crisps differed according to the spuds we used and having tried all available varieties from Arran Banner, Pilot, Chief and Victor, right through, we found that Kerr Pinks gave the best result. “Every day brought a little more knowledge – that frost spoiled potatoes for crisping, then that just cold weather, below 450F, was sufficient to spoil the potatoes. That slice thickness, cooking temperature and bad handling of potatoes before delivery or after, effects the quality of the finished product.”
Seamus was charged with perfecting Murphy’s revolutionary new idea – flavoured crisps. Working on what was essentially nothing more sophisticated than a kitchen table, he experimented until he came up with a cheese and onion flavour that his boss judged to be acceptable. A version of the recipe in Seamus’s own handwriting still exists to this day and remains a treasured family possession. His inventive creation proved to be a first in the crisp industry
worldwide. This flavouring technique proved so popular that it led to the eventual creation of many other flavours with other manufacturers around the world adopting the trend.
The brand name Tayto had its genesis in Joe Murphy’s eldest son Joseph’s inability to pronounce the word, potato. As a child, he called potatoes ‘tatos’. So, with the addition of a ‘y’, Mr Tayto was born.
In the early days the crisps were packed by hand in waxed greaseproof paper and were then delivered to the shops in an airtight tin, to help maintain their freshness.
Seamus Burke recalled that initially their salesmen “met with quite a lot of resistance, seemingly due to the fact that shopkeepers still had crisps, some two years old, under their counters and on their shelves, as a result of a (previous) manufacturer going bang”.
“These crisps were a complete loss to them and they were naturally wary of our product. “Incidentally, from what I could gather at the time this manufacturer had great sales for a year or two, but then got too greedy and packed all sorts of crap, with sad results.” Seamus wrote of how at the time in 1957,they packed all their crisps in tins, and as output increased, had a big problem in cleaning tins.
“This required a purchase of a tin washing machine, but without production increasing still further, the tin problem became acute. Space was a considerable problem, and in addition considerable time and labour was consumed in handling.
“Vans had to be unloaded of empties, before loading each morning, but it was a considerable step forward from the early days when we had no van. “Our first salemen, Mr Harry Murray and Mr Paddy Lynch set off each morning with a tin under their oxter.
“In those days a tin of 18 packets cast 4/6 plus 2/deposit on the tin, realising 6/-. This took some selling as quite a few of our present sales staff will recall. “Eventually the tin problem became so bad with cleaning, handling, checking and storing that a decision was taken to switch to cartons. “This was a great boost to production, sales and accounts departments, but we soon had complaints of stale crisps and had to introduce lining the cartons with polythene bags. This was a new expense and created much more work for the packers.” In 1964 the company purchased their first automatic packing machine and the new pack, apart from its presentation value, had properties which lengthened the shelf life of the crisps.
The crisps eventally proved to be so popular and the unique product was in such demand that by the 1960s, Joe Murphy was a millionaire.
He drove around Dublin in a Rolls Royce and was hailed by then Taoiseach Sean Lemass as the very epitome of the Irish entrepreneurial spirit.
In 1964 Beatrice Foods of Chicago bought a majority stake in Tayto. By the early 1970s Tayto had some 300 employees, most of them at its state-of-the-art factory situated in Coolock.
The relative cheap and hugely taste snack-food grew and grew in popularity through the years. Today, the business, now based in Co. Meath, is owned by Intersnack Group. In 1954, Tayto sold an estimated 350 bags of crisps each day, today it sells an estimated 350 bags every 40 seconds and the business continues to grow. Tayto is still best known for the original cheese and onion crisp. A survey in 2015 revealed that 64% of Irish emigrants said that cheese and onion Tayto is the food they miss most.
In April 1956 Seamus Burke married Bridget Lynch and set up home in Glasnevin in Dublin.
He lived a contented life. His passions were fishing, greyhound racing, home movies and gardening. Seamus also enjoyed many return visits to his native Cloonacool, spending time with his brother Malachy at his home in Doomore. Seamus retired from Tayto in January 1983 after 29 years. Unfortunately, he suffered a stroke shortly afterwards and died on March 20 that same year.
But he is now commemorated on a set of information panels displayed in the village of Cloonacool near where the family home stood.
The local committee behind the initiative are hoping to hve an official unvealing when public health restrictions allow. They expressed special thanks to Nick King, a nephew of Seamus Burke, for passing on the initial information about Seamus’s involvement with Tayto. They said much of this information about Seamus was provided by Fionnuala Ryan and her collection of photographs and documents were invaluable.
They are also grateful to Declan and Vincent Burke, formerly of Doomore, for their help and co-operation in establishing this commemoration to their uncle and to Sligo County Council for facilitating the funding of the commemoration.
LEFT: One of the original tins used by Tayto to deliver crisps to shops.