How did French Fries get their name?

"..in the 1840s, pomme frites ("fried potatoes") first appeared in Paris. Sadly, we don't know the name of the ingenious chef who first sliced the potato into long slender pieces and fried them. But they were immediately popular, and were sold on the streets of Paris by push-cart vendors.





Frites spread to America where they were called French fried potatoes. You asked how they got their name--pretty obvious, I'd say: they came from France, and they were fried potatoes, so they were called "French fried potatoes." The name was shortened to "french fries" in the 1930s. "

How did French Fries get their name?
Not Really My Friend The Belgians are noted for claiming that French fries, although the name would point elsewhere, are actually Belgian in origin.





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Reply:During World War I the American doughboys In Belgium were eating this food product. While they were in predomiantly French areas they were being served these "french fries" that were fried in metal cans which was easier than the traditional way of cooking potatoes. They claimed the name French Fries Report Abuse

Reply:Another claim is that the inclusion of the word "French" in the fried potatoes is most likely a confusion as to the nationality of those who introduced the food to American and Canadian soldiers in World War I. When American and Canadian soldiers were stationed in southern Belgium, where many major battles of World War I took place, they were served "pommes frites". Since the region of Belgium the soldiers were in was predominantly French-speaking, the soldiers brought the dish back to the United States as "french fries".
Reply:some one named them
Reply:At the risk of sounding original, I'm not going to blantantly copy-and-paste an answer that's just a little twist on what's already been said. French fries (spelled with a lower-case 'f' because 'french' is not proper) are so named because it is believed that they are prepared 'in a French style'. Although what Americans call a french fry and any food that ever originated in France have little in common.
Reply:in the 1840s, pomme frites ("fried potatoes") first appeared in Paris. Sadly, we don't know the name of the ingenious chef who first sliced the potato into long slender pieces and fried them. But they were immediately popular, and were sold on the streets of Paris by push-cart vendors.





Frites spread to America where they were called French fried potatoes. You asked how they got their name--pretty obvious, I'd say: they came from France, and they were fried potatoes, so they were called "French fried potatoes." The name was shortened to "french fries" in the 1930s.





By the way, the verb "to french" in cooking has come to mean to cut in long, slender strips, and some people insist that "french fries" come from that term. However, the French fried potato was known since the middle 1800s, while the OED cites the first use of the verb "to french" around 1895, so it appears pretty convincing that "french fried potatoes" came before the verb "frenching." The origin of the name is thus the country of origin French and not the cooking term french.





In the U.K., fried fish had been on sale by street vendors since the 1600s. In 1864, a brilliant (but, alas, unknown) Brit teamed French fried potatoes (called "chips" in English) with fried fish, to create the famous and popular fish and chips.





Today, of course, the worldwide popularity of McDonalds and Burger King and Wendy's and their ilk have brought French fries to the world. Amusingly, they are now often called "American fries" in many countries.





French fries are commonly eaten with ketchup in the U.S., but with malt vinegar (delicious) in the U.K., and with mayonnaise (appalling) in the Netherlands. The French mostly take them straight, but the Belgians have the best idea (as is so often the case with food): they eat frites with buckets full of mussels.





While we're on the subject, potato chips (British: crisps) are a purely American invention. In 1852, a chef (George Crum) at a resort in Saratoga, N.Y., was annoyed when a patron (the story says Cornelius Vanderbilt) sent some French fried potatoes back to the kitchen, complaining that they were too thick. Somewhat spitefully, Crum sliced a potato so thin that it couldn't be speared by a fork, and then fried the slices. One can hear him mutter, "That thin enough for you?" But the patron was delighted, not annoyed, and the potato chip was thus born. They were called "Saratoga chips" and were popular in the Northeast (often eaten with raw clams and oysters) until the 1920s, when they spread through the U.S. and thence the world.
Reply:In short, no one really knows for sure.





Wikipedia has an interesting discourse on the multitude of possible origins and claims to origin.





I especially like the one that pomme frites the french name for fries and that the french name is named for the Belgian inventor named "Frits". (Kinda like Fettucine Alfredo).
Reply:When potatoes, or anything else, are cut into that particular shape they are called "Frenched" (as opposed to diced or chopped, or whatever). So the potatoes were Frenched and fried, hence "French fries".
Reply:Origin of the name "french fries".


The logical explanation of the origin of the North American name of the dish is that it derives from potatoes that have been "fried in the french manner". The English verb fry is ambiguous: it can refer to both to saut茅ing and to deep-fat frying, while the French verb it derives from refers unambiguously to the latter.


Some feel that the word "french" in "french fries" is refers to the verb "to french", which means "to cut in thin lengthwise strips before cooking" (Merriam-Webster's Collegiate Dictionary, Tenth Ed.) On the other hand, "to french" is defined as "to prepare, as a chop, by partially cutting the meat from the shank and leaving bare the bone so as to fit it for convenient handling." (Oxford English Dictionary) in other dictionaries, seeming to suggest that the meaning of this process is not necessarily as set as it may appear. In addition, the verb "to french" did not start appearing until after "french fried potatoes" had appeared in the English-speaking world.





Many other widely disseminated legends for the origin of the name also exist.





By one account, the fried potatoes are called 'french fries' because they are commonly fried in the Belgo-French manner (that is to say, frying them twice with a small pause in the middle). This is plausible, and seems to suggest the word "french" implies the manner in which the food is fried.





Other accounts say that they were once called 'German fries' but the name was changed either for political reasons (Germany was once the enemy of the United States) or simple historical reasons (a traditional theory poses that it was in France during World War I that American soldiers first encountered the dish). This seems unlikely, as Germany was not as famous for its "french fries" as other European countries, in addition to the fact that German immigrants did not seem to bring the dish over to the United States.





Another claim is that the inclusion of the word "French" in the fried potatoes is most likely a confusion as to the nationality of those who introduced the food to American and Canadian soldiers in World War I. When American and Canadian soldiers were stationed in southern Belgium, where many major battles of World War I took place, they were served "pomme frites". Since the region of Belgium the soldiers were in was predominantly French-speaking, the soldiers brought the dish back to the United States as "french fries".


History


Many possible claims as to the origin of "french fries" exist.


Many attribute the dish to France, and offer as evidence a notation by President Jefferson. "Potatoes deep-fried while raw, in small slices" are noted in a manuscript in Thomas Jefferson's hand (circa 1801) and the recipe almost certainly comes from his French chef, Honor茅 Julien. In addition, from 1813 ("The French Cook" by Louis Ude) on recipes for what can be described as "french fries" occur in popular American cookbooks. Recipes for fried potatoes in French cookbooks date back at least to Menon's "Les soupers de la cour" (1755). However, according to the Food Reference Web site, the first reference to French fried potatoes in English was in 1894 in O. Henry's Rolling Stones, "Our countries are great friends. We have given you Lafayette and French fried potatoes." In addition, when the controversy over Freedom Fries first began, the French embassy claimed that the food was actually Belgian.





Belgium itself also lays claim as the "origin" of French Fries, even though it acknowledges the possibility of the dish being from northern France. According to the popular Belgian belief, this recipe for potatoes was first used in the Meuse valley, between Dinant and Li猫ge, Belgium. The poor inhabitants of this region had the custom of accompanying their meals with small fried fish, but when the river was frozen and they were unable to fish, they cut potatoes lengthwise and fried them in oil to accompany their meals. (Belgian Federal Portal) In 1861, a Belgian entrepreneur named Frits is said to have opened a stand selling this product. He is also said to have given it its own name, frites, which is the french name for the dish in Belgium.





The Spanish claim for originating french fries credits the first appearance of the recipe to have been in Galicia, where it was used as an accompaniment for fish dishes, and from which it spread to the rest of the country and then to Belgium.
Reply:mmmmm... from the french. also may have to do with the fryer.

leander