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Saturday 5 April 2014

Chips (or French Fries)

French fries were invented in Belgium.

One of the earliest references to fried potato strips being referred to as "French" was in 1802 when Thomas Jefferson had the White House chef, Frenchman Honoré Julien, prepare “potatoes served in the French manner” for a dinner party.  He described them as “Potatoes deep-fried while raw, in small cuttings”.


In A Tale Of Two Cities (1859), Charles Dickens refers to “Husky chips of potato, fried with some reluctant drops of oil”. This is the earliest known reference to potato chips in English. But the term “French-fried potatoes” was first seen in 1856.

McCain Foods Limited is a Canadian multi-national privately owned company that was founded in 1957 by brothers, Harrison and Wallace McCain in Florenceville, New Brunswick, Canada. The company produces one third of the world's French fries.

In 2003, as the United States was preparing to invade Iraq, some Americans were angered by the French government's opposition to the invasion. In protest, a few American politicians and some restaurant owners decided to rename "French fries" as "freedom fries" in an attempt to show their displeasure with France's position.

In 2004, the United States Department of Agriculture classified batter-coated French fries as a vegetable. This was upheld by an appeals court.

 National French Fry Day is celebrated each year on July 13th.


Around seven per cent of the potatoes grown in the USA end up in chip bags sold by McDonald’s.

More than 1.6 million tons of potatoes are made into chips every year in the UK.

Potatoes for chips in Britain are grown on enough land to accommodate almost 20,000 football pitches.

Belgians eat more fried potatoes per capita than any other country,. They consume on average 75 kg (165 lbs) of fries potatoes per person each year, a third more than Americans.

The average Briton eats just more than 7 lb of chips a year; the average American eats 16 lb.

By Popo le Chien - Own work,  Wikipedia

In Australia, chicken salt is an immensely popular condiment to use on fries, even though it was originally invented for rotisserie chicken. Chicken salt consists of salt, onion powder, garlic powder, celery salt, paprika, chicken bouillon and monosodium glutamate, along with some unspecified herbs and spices

French Fries are not called that in France. They are known as frites, patates frites, or pommes frites in French.

A study at Harvard University found that potato chips cause more weight gain than any other food.

Before McDonald's switched from cooking its fries in beef tallow to vegetable oil, the fries had more saturated beef fat than their hamburgers.

A chip pan is a deep-sided cooking pan used for deep-frying french fries. They are the single largest cause of fires in the United Kingdom causing over 12,000 each year. Some cities even offer chip pan 'amnesty' programs where you can trade in your outdated deep-sided chip pan for a deep-fryer.

A cast iron chip pan with alnumium basket by Hayford Peirce

Cold fries taste bad because, as they cool down, water from the frying process moves out of the starch crystals, making the crisp fry soggy.

Source Daily Express, Todayifoundout.com

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