55 Fun Facts About French Fry

In Britain and Ireland, what are American-style potato chips called?

Crisps is the British and Irish word, because 'chips' there already means the thick-cut fried potatoes that Americans call fries.

Poutine, the dish of fries topped with cheese curds and gravy, comes from which Canadian province?

Quebec is the birthplace: poutine appeared in rural snack bars in the late 1950s, in dairy country where cheese factories could supply the fresh, squeaky curds.

In which Quentin Tarantino film does a hitman back from Amsterdam marvel that the Dutch drown their fries in mayonnaise?

Pulp Fiction's Vincent Vega saves the detail for last: his partner Jules enjoys hearing about the 'Royale with Cheese' and 'Le Big Mac', but the mayonnaise makes him groan in disgust.

In March 2003, US House cafeterias replaced the word "French" on their fries and toast with what word?

They became 'freedom fries' and 'freedom toast': Representatives Bob Ney and Walter B. Jones ordered the renaming in March 2003 over France's opposition to the Iraq War; the menus quietly reverted in 2006.

Which fast-food chain introduced its spiral-shaped Curly-Q Fries in 1988?

Arby's put Curly-Q Fries on its menu in 1988, but the spiral cut is far older: an Oklahoma City restaurant was already selling 'Suzi-Q' curly fries decades earlier.

Until 1990, McDonald's cooked its fries mainly in which fat?

Beef tallow gave McDonald's fries their rich, buttery taste until 1990, when worries about cholesterol pushed the chain to drop animal fat; it then added beef flavouring to keep the taste.

Which US president served 'potatoes served in the French manner' at the White House in 1802?

Thomas Jefferson picked up the taste while US minister to France in the 1780s, and a recipe in his own hand describes raw potatoes deep-fried in small slices.

The oldest known written mention of fried potatoes describes a 1629 meal among the Mapuche in which country?

Chile's claim rests on Francisco Núñez de Pineda's 1673 memoir Cautiverio feliz, which recalls Mapuche women serving 'papas fritas' during his captivity in 1629.

Art historian Paul Ilegems has suggested which Spanish saint cooked the first fries?

Teresa of Ávila was Ilegems's candidate: Spain was the first European country to receive the potato, and frying in oil was already a Mediterranean habit.

In which Belgian city is a museum of potato fries that styles itself the world's first and only?

Bruges got its fries museum in 2008 from Eddy Van Belle, the man behind the city's chocolate museum Choco-Story, after he found that no museum of fries existed anywhere in the world.

A Belgian journalist claimed potatoes were fried in the Meuse valley before 1680 as a substitute for what?

Jo Gérard's story was that villagers took to frying potatoes as a substitute for frying fish when rivers froze; he never produced the 1781 manuscript, and the potato did not reach the Meuse region until around 1735.

In Belgium, fries are traditionally served in what kind of container?

A paper cone, the cornet de frites, is the classic serving at Belgian fry stalls, where fries are a meal in themselves rather than a side, finished with a spoonful of mayonnaise on top.

In the two-bath method for fries, what is the job of the first, cooler bath of fat?

Cooking the potato through is the first bath's job, at about 160 °C, and it can be done well ahead; a brief second fry in hotter fat then makes the outside crunchy to order.

Ray Kroc of McDonald's sealed a handshake deal for frozen fries with which Idaho potato baron?

J. R. Simplot had been freezing fries since the 1940s; the handshake with Ray Kroc began a supply deal that lasted decades and helped make the Idaho businessman a billionaire.

Which potato cultivar dominates North American french fry production?

Russet Burbank, a russet-skinned mutation of Luther Burbank's 1870s Burbank potato, is the standard fry potato for McDonald's and the big Idaho processors because of its long shape and high dry matter.

McCain Foods opened its first frozen-fry plant in 1957 beside the Saint John River in which Canadian province?

New Brunswick was home: the McCain brothers, sons of a seed-potato exporter, built the plant in their own village of Florenceville, turning the family's crop into frozen fries.

By legend, puffy pommes soufflées were born in 1837 when a chef re-fried potatoes at a banquet opening what?

A railway line from Paris to Saint-Germain was being inaugurated; the story, which historians dispute, has the chef drop potatoes he had fried earlier back into the oil and watch them puff up.

Ore-Ida invented Tater Tots in 1953 from what?

Tater Tots began as leftover slivers from fry production at Ore-Ida, which the Grigg brothers chopped, seasoned and formed into little logs in 1953; the brand name fuses Oregon and Idaho.

In which US state was fry sauce, the pink ketchup-and-mayonnaise blend, popularised?

Utah is fry sauce's home: by the best-known account, Don Carlos Edwards mixed the pink sauce at his Salt Lake City barbecue stand in the 1940s and took it to his Arctic Circle drive-ins.

In 2018 Heinz promised to sell which sauce in US stores if 500,000 people voted yes in a Twitter poll?

Mayochup, a mayonnaise-ketchup blend, reached US shelves in September 2018 once the poll passed its target; many replies pointed out that the mix already existed as fry sauce.

The Dutch street food 'patatje oorlog' translates literally as what?

War fries is the literal meaning, 'oorlog' being Dutch for war: mayonnaise, raw onion and a peanut satay sauce the Dutch borrowed from Indonesian cooking, in a mix that changes from region to region.

In Cape Town, soft, soggy fries doused in white vinegar are known by what name?

Slap-chips ('slap' is Afrikaans for limp) are fried at a lower temperature for longer than usual, then soaked in vinegar; they are the essential filling of the Gatsby, Cape Town's giant sandwich.

In Australia, what seasoning is a popular addition to hot chips?

Chicken salt was mixed by Peter Brinkworth in Gawler, South Australia, in the 1970s to season rotisserie chickens; it took off after one of his chip-shop customers tried it on hot chips.

In June 2004, the US Department of Agriculture classified batter-coated French fries as what?

A vegetable, and a 'fresh' one: the trade-law label meant a bankrupt food distributor had to pay its fry suppliers in full, and the USDA stressed that it said nothing about nutrition.

Argentina's salsa golf, a ketchup-and-mayonnaise cousin of fry sauce, is credited to a man who later won what?

A Nobel Prize went to Luis Federico Leloir, who by legend grew bored of plain mayonnaise on his prawns at a Mar del Plata golf club in the 1920s, stirred in ketchup, and let his friends name the result.

In French, thick-cut fries of about 10 mm are named after which Paris landmark?

Pont Neuf, Paris's oldest standing bridge despite a name meaning 'New Bridge', is where one enduring story has street vendors selling the first fries in the 1780s; chefs still call the thick cut pommes Pont-Neuf.

Fernand Lachance supposedly coined 'poutine' in 1957 by saying curds in fries would make what?

'Ça va faire une maudite poutine!' ('that'll make a damn mess') is what Fernand Lachance is said to have told the customer who asked for curds in his bag of fries; other towns tell rival origin stories.

Chef Martin Picard pushed poutine onto upscale menus in the early 2000s by topping it with which luxury ingredient?

Foie gras poutine at Picard's bistro Au Pied de Cochon was soon imitated: chefs elsewhere answered with lobster and braised-beef versions, and a boom in poutine shops followed in the early 2010s.

'Disco fries', with mozzarella and brown gravy, were popularised by diners in which US state?

New Jersey diners made disco fries a staple, the Tick Tock in Clifton claiming the invention; the name is said to come from the 1970s crowds who piled in hungry after a night at the disco.

Carne asada fries, topped with grilled steak, guacamole and cheese, originated in which California city?

San Diego taco shops created it: local lore credits Lolita's Mexican Food, where a supplier suggested serving the steak-and-fries filling of the city's California burrito on a plate instead.

Kapsalon, a Rotterdam dish of fries topped with shawarma and melted cheese, takes its Dutch name from what kind of business?

A barber shop is what 'kapsalon' means in Dutch: by the usual account a Rotterdam hairdresser kept ordering the combination from the shawarma shop down the street in 2003, and his own shop gave the dish its name.

The Belgian friterie sandwich of baguette, fries and fried meat is called a mitraillette, meaning what?

Submachine gun is the literal meaning of mitraillette; after the 2016 Brussels bombings, people shared pictures of the sandwich online as a show of friendship and humour.

The salchipapa, sliced sausage mixed with fries, originated in which South American capital?

Lima is the home of the salchipapa, whose name fuses salchicha (sausage) and papa (potato); from Peru it spread across Latin America, carried by migrants and restaurants as far as Argentina and the United States.

Steak frites was the subject of a semiotic analysis in Mythologies (1957) by which French thinker?

Roland Barthes argued that chips had become a badge of Frenchness, noting that General de Castries asked for them as his first meal after the armistice in Indochina.

German fries served with both ketchup and mayonnaise are nicknamed 'Pommes Schranke' after what?

A barrier gate at a German level crossing is striped red and white, like ketchup beside mayonnaise; the nickname comes from the Ruhr, where the order also goes by Pommes rot-weiß.

A 2017 European Commission acrylamide recommendation angered Belgians by suggesting fries be prepared how?

The Commission's draft wanted potatoes blanched before frying to cut acrylamide; Belgian fries are cut raw and fried twice, so the proposal was seen as an assault on the national tradition.

What is the name of the chemical browning process that gives fries their golden colour?

The Maillard reaction between amino acids and sugars on the surface produces the golden crust in hot oil, while the fluffy interior comes from starch granules swelling with trapped water.

About how many pounds of French fries does the average American eat in a year?

The average American eats roughly 30 pounds of French fries a year, and most of them away from home: only about a tenth of frozen fries are sold through supermarkets.

Potatoes stored in which place produce more acrylamide when fried, the US Food and Drug Administration warns?

The refrigerator is the problem: storage temperature changes a potato's sugar content, and acrylamide forms when those sugars react with the amino acid asparagine in hot oil.

Joseph Malin is often credited with opening Britain's first fish-and-chip shop, around 1860, in which city?

London's East End is where Malin, a Jewish immigrant, sold fried fish with chips; northerners credit John Lees, frying at Mossley market near Oldham by 1863, and the argument has never been settled.

The OED's earliest citation for 'chips' meaning fried potato is from which 1859 Dickens novel?

A Tale of Two Cities describes hunger in a poor Paris quarter through 'husky chips of potato, fried with some reluctant drops of oil', so the first recorded English 'chips' were being eaten in France.

Which burger chain serves fresh-cut fries as its only side and tells staff to add an extra scoop to every order?

Five Guys cuts its fries fresh in each store and tells staff to top every order with an extra scoop, so customers feel they got a bargain.

Lamb Weston, one of the world's largest frozen-fry producers, is headquartered in a suburb of which city?

Lamb Weston is based in Eagle, a suburb of Boise; F. Gilbert Lamb founded the company in 1950 in Weston, Oregon, which gave it the second half of its name.

Which potato variety is the traditional choice for Belgian frites?

Bintje was bred by a Frisian schoolmaster, Kornelis de Vries, who named it after one of his pupils, Bintje Jansma; the floury Dutch variety went on to become the classic frites potato.

In the Netherlands, fries are called 'patat' in the north and what in the south?

Frieten and 'patat' are two halves of one phrase, patates frites: north of the great rivers the Dutch kept 'patat', while the south and Flanders say 'friet', and 'patat' there still means a plain potato.

In Spain, the tapa of fried potato chunks in a spicy paprika sauce is called what?

Patatas bravas get their red from paprika, not tomato, in the classic Madrid sauce: purists thicken pimentón and olive oil with flour and won't hear of tomato, though plenty of bars add it.

Waffle fries get their lattice shape by doing what to the potato before each pass over the grater?

Quarter-turning it between passes over a ridged blade makes each new set of grooves cross the last, leaving the lattice of holes; the fries are then deep-fried just once.

Which British prime minister called fish and chips 'the good companions'?

Winston Churchill gave the pairing its nickname; fish and chips are credited with sustaining British morale through two world wars, and by the 1930s the country had some 35,000 chip shops.

A Bavarian showman sold 'Paris-style fried potatoes' at Belgian fairs in the 1840s under what trade name?

Fritz was the name Frédéric Krieger traded under: he had learned to fry potatoes at a Paris rotisserie, a trail historians now follow to trace the Belgian fry stand back to Paris.

One legend says WWI US troops misnamed the chips they ate in Belgium because of what?

The legend says the local army spoke French, Belgium's soldiers being francophone, so the doughboys called the chips 'French'; in fact 'French fried potatoes' was already in American print decades before 1917.

In French cooking, very thin fries named after straw are called pommes what?

Paille means straw: pommes paille are cut so fine that one quick frying is enough, where thicker fries get two, and they come out crunchy right to the middle.

In Britain, what is a 'chip butty'?

A sandwich filled with chips, ideally on cheap, soft white bread: food writers insist it beats artisan sourdough because it moulds around the hot chips and holds them in place.

Which British chef developed triple-cooked chips, simmered first and then fried twice?

Heston Blumenthal spent years from the early 1990s chasing a chip with a glass-like crust and a fluffy middle: simmer, dry and chill, then fry once in cooler oil and once in hot.

In Japan, what are French fries generally called?

Furaido poteto, 'fried potato', is wasei-eigo: English words joined in Japan into a phrase English speakers don't use for fries, and it is a standard fast-food side there.

A 2023 Chinese study linked frequent fried-food eating to a 12% higher risk of which mental-health condition?

Anxiety risk was 12% higher and depression risk 7% higher among frequent fried-food eaters in the PNAS study, most of all in young men, though the authors could not say which caused which.