"Accident is the name of the greatest of all inventors," Mark Twain said, and when it comes to the origin of chocolate chip cookies, he may be right.

One of the most delicious mistakes in American baking history was made in the 1930s by Ruth Wakefield at the Toll House Inn, a bed and breakfast she ran in Whitman, Mass. Intending to create a chocolate butter cookie for guests, Ms. Wakefield broke apart a semi-sweet Nestlé chocolate bar hoping the chocolate would dissolve into the batter. Instead, the chocolate pieces remained intact, creating the first incarnation of what we now know as the chocolate chip cookie, whether it's the six-ounce indulgence from New York's Levain Bakery, the soft oatmeal-chip concotion from the Bay Area's Sweet Adeline Bake Shop, or the toffee version from Marnee's in Maine.

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But what makes one chocolate chip cookie better than another? Or even... the best? "It's like asking whose Mom makes a better matzo ball soup or peanut butter and jelly -- it's terribly subjective," says Sherry Yard, cookbook author and executive pastry chef at Wolfgang Puck's Spago, Cut and Chinois. "You have your flat and crispy folks, crispy and crunchy peeps, and your cakey and chewy crew, which should not be confused with the crunchy gooey gang. All are 'The Best' -- the key is to know who you are baking for."