Things We Just Found Out About How People Eat French Fries

In Great Britain, there are entire restaurants dedicated to serving fried fish with a side of widely cut french fries. Known as “chippies,” these popular fast-food stops serve a modern take on the dish introduced by Jewish refugees in the 17th century. 

According to legend, the group began frying potatoes when it was too cold to catch fish. Once the surrounding icy waters thawed out, they mixed the two together to create the delightful takeaway meal now recognized throughout the world. 

To provide extra flavor, most fish and chips are served with lemon, malt vinegar, and tartar sauce. 

From the time french fries hit the culinary scene, chefs, cooks, diners, and their respective consumers have developed strong opinions over how to make the world's best fry. Now, the world boasts at least 15 different french fry cuts with a style, size, and texture for everyone. 

When it comes to enjoying fried potatoes, foodies can eat them as waffle fries, curly fries, steak fries, tater tots, crinkle fries, straight-cut fries, Belgian fries, garlic fries, standard-cut fries, shoe string or matchstick fries, British “chips,” sweet potato fries, and chili-cheese fries. 

First hitting the diner scene in the 1950s, “poutine” eventually became unofficially known as Canada's national dish. This style of french fry offers a basket of greasy fried potatoes covered in brown gravy and topped with cheese curds. 

Though it originated in Quebec, the meal is such a popular menu item that patrons can now order it at fast food chain restaurants like McDonald's all over Canada. If fry lovers are looking for a larger array of topping choices, there are also restaurants with entire menus dedicated to different versions of the classic poutine dish. 

No one knows exactly when the first french fry made its culinary debut. Before the 16th century, the potato wasn't even considered edible. While legends in France maintain that street vendors introduced the cuisine on the Pont Neuf bridge in the late 18th century, Belgians insist that their own town of Namur invented the fired potato during a particularly cold winter in 1680. According to their legend, local fishermen chose to fry potatoes for a meal when the river was frozen over, and they weren't able to catch fish. 

Either way, it was the French who introduced fried potatoes in multiple varieties to world cuisine. To draw attention to the undervalued spud, French army pharmacist Antoine-Augustin Parmentier began serving multiple dishes, including potatoes, to extensive guest lists at extravagant parties two centuries later. Among these rumored guests include American founding fathers Thomas Jefferson and Benjamin Franklin. 

Though curly fries have technically been around since Thomas Jefferson began serving them at the White House during his presidency in the early 1800s, they weren't a popular cut of fry until Arby's mainstreamed them in 1988. 

To create the iconic curl, a massive machine powered by water moving 60 mph holds each individual potato in place as a knife moves around the spud's circumference. This provides diners with food that serves a dual purpose: not only are the seasonings and texture satisfying to the palate, but the inevitable springiness of the french fry allows playful foodies the ability to stretch one fry over 2 feet before it bounces back to its original shape. 

As a poor child growing up in London, the young Charles Dickens often found himself daydreaming about the food he couldn't afford while working in a shoe polish factory. His fascination with good cuisine trickled into his novels, which often include rich, detailed meal depictions. 

Dickens's attention to culinary detail was also ahead of its time, as he described modern British fish in chips (which weren't marketed until 1863) in his 1859 novel, A Tale of Two Cities. His love for the food is clearly recognized in his words, describing: 

husky chips of potato, fried with some reluctant drops of oil.