Creosote Cleaner?

[Watchman]

A friend of ours who gets 'old-timey' magazines and how-to stuff spied this and gave it to my wife. I've never heard of it before, but it was a creosote cleaner for your chimney. The old-time hint was to dry out potato peelings - yes, you heard right - and put them in the fire and they are supposed to burn so fiercely, they will burn out the creosote. Well, wife had to try it so she had three cookie sheets full and put them on top of our furnace to dry. It took the residual heat from the furnace about a week (because we never turn it on) to dry the peelings to a brittle consistency so they just snap. Took a pan of them and threw them in on top of the fire and sure enough soot on the insert glass door disappeared. The next day she checked the grate, which was always black and it was clean. Is this too good to be true? At any rate we now dry the peelings for this use.