French fries (American English with "French" usually capitalised), or perhaps chips, fried potatoes, or French-fried potatoes are batons connected with deep-friend potato. Americans refer to any type of elongated bits of friend potatoes as fries, while in United Kingdom, Australia, Ireland and New Zealand; long, thinly cut slices of fried potatoes are occasionally known as fries to distinguish them with the far more thinly cut strips called potato chips (while chips usually are referred to as crisps). French fries are known as frites, patates frite, or pomp frites in French, a name which is in addition used in many non-French speaking regions, and also have names which means that "fried potatoes", or "French potatoes" in others.
Belgium
Belgian journalist Jo Gerard, claimed a family manuscript dated 1781, recounts that potatoes had been deep fried previous to 1680, in what was then the Spanish Neatherlands, and is now present day Belgium, in the Meuse Valley. The inhabitants of Namur, Andenne, and Dinant, had the convention of fishing in the Meuse for modest fish and frying, in particular along with the poor, however when the river was frozen and fishing became hazardous, they cut potatoes in the shape of small fish and put them in the fryer like those here.
Gerard has not produced the manuscript supporting this claim which, even if true, is unrelated to the later history of the French fry, as the potato did not arrive in the region until around 1735; also, given the economic condition of the 18th Century it is absolutely unthinkable that a peasant could have possess large quantities of fat for cooking potatoes,
At most they were sautéed in a pan.... Some Belgians believe that the term "French" was introduced when American soldiers arrived in Belgium during world war 1, and as a result called them "French" as it ended up being the official language of the Belgian army at the time. At this time French fries were growing popular.
France and French speaking Canada
In France and French speaking Canada, fried potatoes are formally "pommel de terre frites", but more commonly "pommes frites" , "patates frites", or simply frites. The word "aiguillettes", or "allumettes" is used when chips are very small and thin.
Eating potatoes was promoted in France by Parmentier, but he did not mention fried potatoes in particular. Many Americans attribute the dish to the French, and offer as evidence a notation by US President Thomas Jefferson. "Pommes de terre frites a cry, en petites tranches" ("Potatoes deep fried while raw, in small cuttings") in a manuscript in Thomas Jefferson's hand (circa 1801-1809) and the recipe almost certainly comes from his French chef, Honore Julien. In addition, from 1813 on, recipes for what can be described as French fries occur in popular American cookbooks. By the late 1850s, one of these mention the term "French fried potatoes".
Frites are the main ingredient in the popular Canadian dish called poutine which is a Quebecois dish originally made with cheese curds topped with a brown gravy. The dish emerged in the late 1950s in the Centre-du-Quebec area For most of its existence, poutine was negatively perceived and mocked, poutine is now celebrated both within and outside Quebec borders, poutine has emerged as a new dish classification in its own right, similar in popularity to sandwiches, or soups.
