Are French Fries From France?

Despite its name, the French fry is not French. The origins of the French fry have been traced back to Belgium, where historians claim potatoes were being fried in the late-1600s. According to local Belgian lore, poor villagers living in Meuse Valley often ate small fried fish they caught in the river. Common lore claims that the original fry was born in Namur in francophone Belgium, where the locals were particularly fond of fried fish. When the River Meuse froze over one cold winter in 1680, people ostensibly fried potatoes instead of the small fish they were accustomed to, and the fry was born.

There are a number of stories behind the origins of the name “French fries”. One such story relates that Americans did not enjoy fried potatoes in strips prior to World War I, and that they only started eating the long thin strip style of fried potatoes until their French speaking compatriots in the Belgian Army gave them a taste for the crispy long variety of fried potato. This legend goes on to assert that the distinction then had to be made between “Home Fries”, the cubed type they were accustomed to eating, and “French Fries”, the type that they learned about from the French speakers.

Another origin story has to do with the method that the fries were cut. In classic French cuisine, the julienne cut is a method of cutting food, that results in typically square shaped cross section long thin cuts. It is sometimes know as a matchstick cut. Since this cut was first associated with French cuisine, it was not uncommon to call items cut in this manner ,”Frenched”. From this, if you were to specify how you wanted your potatoes cooked, you could request them “Frenched”, and fried. Eventually, frenched, fried potatoes became simplified to french fried potatoes, as it was easier to say, and since these became the most common item that was both frenched and fried, eventually the word potato was also dropped, and they became french fries.

Whatever the fact may be, one cannot deny how tasty French Fries are yet the recipe is so tasty...