Looks like the "French" is back in fries

[dianeduane]

Took them long enough. (eyeroll)

Of course, the real joke is that the fries are actually Belgian in origin. (The WWI US "doughboys" who discovered them had simply wound up in a French-speaking part of Belgium.) The best evidence of this provenance -- not concrete, granted: the dish is too old for that -- can be found in the fact that every other language assigning fries a national origin associates them with either the Belgians or the Dutch. Only US English calls fries "French".

Much more on the subject here.

(Argh, I wish I was standing in the main square in Brugge right now, outside that little frietkot that sits down by the door of the Bell Tower, with a paper box of fries. Or down at that frituur around the corner from the apartments we stay in when we're visiting there. [BTW, I agree with the photographer: this guy unnerves me somewhat.] ...Oh well: back to work)

 

 

Comments

[keristor.livejournal.com]

But do you have your fries 'met' or 'zonder'? This is an important social distinction.

(In mainland Britain, of course, we call them 'chips', and they are fat soft greasy ones not the hard litle sticks the foreigners have. Apart from the imported ones in Borgia King and the Scottish Restaurant which must not be mentioned by name...)

[furrfu.livejournal.com]

"Met" and "zonder" are very much Dutch things - in Belgium the choice of condiments tends to be much, much wider than that.

Thanks for posting this, Diane -- as an expat Belgian I keep trying to convince people of what you just said but they're always skeptical. Now I have something I can print out and wave at them...

[madfilkentist]

In German they're referred to by a French word, "Pommes." Don't know if that counts.

[(Anonymous)]

When I was growing up in Austria for a few years, we were told that chips there were known as "pommes frites", or fried potatoes.

(And mushrooms were "champignons", though Google claims "Pilz" is the German word -- there were other words in Austrian that differed from German.)

-- Peter Murray

[dreagoddess.livejournal.com]

Apparently the method of cutting them is called "Frenching", hence the name. Or so I've heard, at least. :)

[dduane.livejournal.com]

I've heard that too -- the Belgian tourism website mentions it -- but I haven't seen it in any of our older English cookbooks. (Then again, I haven't been looking.)

P. is feeling a little better today, so maybe I'll ask him to check The Accomplisht Cook and some of the older facsimile cookbooks for evidence.

[xnamkrad.livejournal.com]

Glad to hear he's on the mend.
On the original topic, didn't one of those who wanted them called "Freedom" fries now say the war is wrong?

[jeeperstseepers.livejournal.com]

I heard that too. It makes sense. I like to think of them as French-cut Fried Potatoes, much like you can buy canned French-cut String Beans.

[padparadscha.livejournal.com]

Good to hear Peter's doing better.

I still think that changing it to freedom fries was one of the silliest, pettiest, and generally most immature possible responses to make to a country's disagreement with our foreign policy. I'm sure it showed those darn French exactly what kind of people they were dealing with.

[trdsf.livejournal.com]

I was more amused that in retaliation, some French took to calling American 'cheese' "idiot cheese". I was even more surprised that that "pasteurized processed cheese food product" even existed in France. I mean, American 'cheese' bears as much relation to a double-creme brie as McDonald's does to Cordon Bleu.

[cartesiandaemon.livejournal.com]

I'm not sure it really makes much difference. I hope the people doing it are aware that France isn't, like, paid royalties or anything, so then the point is entirely cosmetic.

I still think it's stupid: even if a country does have an awful government, I don't see why they can't have *some* good point, perhaps culinarily. But the point seems to get across whether the obliterated adjective is even etymologically related or not. It just makes people laugh a lot more when no-one associates the thing with the country *until* someone changes the name.