{"id":41396,"date":"2021-09-17T09:00:24","date_gmt":"2021-09-17T15:00:24","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.uchealth.org\/today\/?p=41396"},"modified":"2023-06-23T10:06:02","modified_gmt":"2023-06-23T16:06:02","slug":"french-fries-arent-actually-french","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.uchealth.org\/today\/french-fries-arent-actually-french\/","title":{"rendered":"French fries aren’t actually French. They’re Belgian. Make ‘French’ fries at home."},"content":{"rendered":"
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French fries are actually Belgian. Try making them at home. Photo: Getty Images.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

The French kiss isn\u2019t French; it\u2019s Italian. French dressing isn\u2019t French; it\u2019s American. And French fries, as we know them, aren\u2019t French; they\u2019re Belgian.<\/p>\n

It\u2019s likely that World War Two U.S. Army grunts nicknamed the twice-fried, long-cut (julienned) potatoes that they encountered in southern Belgium \u201cFrench fries\u201d simply because southern Belgians speak French.<\/p>\n

It\u2019s exactly how, for coffee-making, we call the plunger pot a \u201cFrench press.\u201d We first saw it in or from France. The French don\u2019t call it that. They call it a \u201ccafeti\u00e8re \u00e0 piston<\/i>.\u201d<\/p>\n

For centuries, cooks have written recipes on both sides of the Atlantic for potatoes \u201cserved in the French manner\u201d or even \u201cFrench-fried potatoes,\u201d but none were recipes for what we know as French fries. The potatoes always were sliced very thinly (into \u201ccoins\u201d) and cooked, in only one go, in some sort of fat, \u201cgoose-dripping,\u201d to cite the 1828 \u201cThe Cook and Housewife\u2019s Manual\u201d from England.<\/p>\n

\u201cThey were very high relish.\u201d Indeed.<\/p>\n

A recipe for such\u2014\u201cpommes de terre frites, \u00e0 cr\u00fb, en petites tranches<\/i>\u201d (\u201cpotatoes fried, initially raw, in small slices\u201d) \u2014exists from 1802 in Thomas Jefferson\u2019s handwriting, likely gotten from his time as ambassador to France in the late 1700s.<\/p>\n

Another interesting example comes from an 1838 issue of the Irish \u201cA Freeman\u2019s Journal\u201d for the \u201cFRENCH METHOD OF COOKING POTATOES They divide into the thinnest possible slices the potatoe [sic],\u00a0raw<\/i>, not boiled, and fry it in the finest olive oil or butter.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt then eats crimp [crisp or brittle] like the finest biscuit [cookie].\u201d Note the old use of the verb \u201cto eat,\u201d as \u201cto have a certain consistency on eating.\u201d What we have here are early instructions for potato chips, or \u201ccrisps,\u201d as the British and Irish call them.

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