Folding Laundry

In the 1920s, a man named Frank Smith created Salt n’ Shake. To avoid having salt shakers stolen by pub customers, he invented a packet of potato crisps with a tiny salt sachet inside. You can still find them in supermarkets, now made by Walkers. He did not revolutionise manufactured snacks but he gifted the British a beautiful oxymoron: a highly processed potato with the option of salting to taste. I can’t think of any equivalents. I can’t think of a cookie that you choc-chip to taste. Salt makes the potato crisp as the final production step, but Frank Smith said ‘Let them decide that.’

A century later, I, a young woman not from here, bought a 6-pack of Salt n’ Shake to switch it up. I open my first packet and it has no salt. I check the label. What is this bland shaving of a potato? I open another. ’Separate salt sachet’. I crunch on another crisp. My friend calls, I decline accidentally. ‘Sorry, have you had these?’ On Reddit, some impressively old people are saying that, ‘back then’, it was not even a sachet – it was a twist of blue paper that you untwisted to get the salt. Brit-innit1943 says ‘I once found a £10 note in them’. SurETip34 says ‘Open the salt and arrange into a neat line’ Okay! Enough of Reddit. Smiths Crisps walked so the snack industry could run. 

The salt burns your tongue because it’s not evenly distributed and you have a flashback to swimming as a kid and swallowing saltwater. Fool me twice, shame on me. 5 packets in, I know exactly how to salt and shake the bag. The freedom is endless. From salt you go to paprika to oregano to chilli flakes. In 1989, Walkers was acquired by Lay’s owner, Frito-Lay, a division of PepsiCo. It was big business, it was op-ed material for the FT Weekend. Frank Smith made it into a big portfolio, all thanks to his stinginess with salt shakers in a Cricklewood pub. It doesn’t matter whether anyone likes them – the world looks hopeful again.