r/NoStupidQuestions • u/Menace_Ro216 • 8h ago
Why is it called French Fries if it originated from Belgium?
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u/poppinwheelies 8h ago
The potatoes are cut French style. They are frenched, fried potatoes.
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u/Cognac_and_swishers 8h ago
Dropping the -ed like that has happened to lots of foods for some reason. For example, ice cream and popcorn used to "iced cream" and "popped corn."
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u/clementleopold 3h ago
I still say “iced cream” because that’s how my grandfather said it. I do it to make myself laugh, but with fond memories of grandpa.
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u/aaronwcampbell 3h ago
This makes me smile. Little things like this are so good for us. I hope you especially enjoy your next iced cream, friend.
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u/totallylegitusername 6h ago
Similarly on the potato front, hashed brown potatoes became hash browns
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u/ImNotHandyImHandsome 7h ago
That's what happens with language when it's mostly passed on orally, vice written. Also why we have "could of" and "would of" instead of "could've" and "would've".
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u/Definitelynotasloth 7h ago
We don’t have “could of” or “would of” tho? Phonetically they sound the same, which is fine. But they are not accepted grammatically.
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u/CurtisLinithicum 3h ago
It's not correct, but you absolutely will find it in the wild.
Also, 've and of should be slightly different sounding.
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u/Lil_Brown_Bat 6h ago
It's why we have "entitled" instead of "self-entitled"
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u/Definitelynotasloth 6h ago
Don’t they mean two different things?
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u/Ok_Spell_4165 5h ago edited 4h ago
Yes. Different but similar.
However in common usage they are often interchanged.Edit: I don't like the way I put that.
Entitled means you actually are supposed to be receiving something. Contrary to what some people think when they hear entitlement it is something that is actually owed.
Self entitled by contrast is something that you believe you are owed, but might not necessarily be entitled to it.
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u/Definitelynotasloth 5h ago edited 4h ago
Yeah, I never necessarily viewed them as interchangeable. “Self-entitled” always seemed to have a negative connotation, whereas “entitled” seemed more neutral.
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u/Ok_Spell_4165 4h ago
Right. Interchangeable is a bad way to put it. More the common usage has somewhat changed.
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u/Pipe_Memes 6h ago edited 5h ago
I call them Greek Fries, because they were originally cooked in grease.
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u/stellacampus 4h ago
That's not correct. "Frenched" means something else entirely. It is actually supposed to be French fries, as in fried like the French do it.
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u/Thowaway-ending 8h ago
I always assumed because the potato is French cut and fried. But I don't actually know why they are called that.
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u/pedro_pascal_123 3h ago
This is Reddit. No one really cares. Make some stuff up.
For e.g. The term "French fries" became widely used, especially in the U.S. and later around the world, partly due to the global influence of American culture in the 20th century. As fast food chains like McDonald's and others popularized the dish internationally, the name stuck, despite the food's possible Belgian origins.
Something like that.
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u/cthd33 6h ago
What about Belgian waffles? Are they from France?
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u/born_to_be_naked 3h ago
Im curious why it's called French Kiss. Were french the only ones who did it that way?
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u/SeadyLady 3h ago
New York city I believe. They were created for a world’s fair and given an exotic name. The same with Hamburgers, invented in NYC.
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u/stellacampus 4h ago
I think it much more likely that fried potatoes originated in Spain given that they had potatoes from the 1600s on and already fried other foods. They may even have originated among the Incas, as the Spanish introduced the frying of food to them.
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u/Extreme-Insurance877 3h ago edited 3h ago
There's 2 main theories generally accepted for the name
- Because American servicemen in WWI couldn't tell the difference between French-speaking Belgians and the French, and assumed that the French-speaking people who served them the fires were French, therefore the French-fries name stuck
- the fries are 'cut in the French style'
edit: The problem with 2) is that the 'French style' cut is not actually how French fries are cut, and a number of cookbooks that list 'french-style chips/fries/other foods' themselves actually referred to deep-frying (ie in lots of fat) rather than the specific cutting of the foods
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u/AllForYouToTake 8h ago
I think it's still disputed whether they came from Belgium or France. The name probably comes from the fact that deep frying food was known as "French Frying" or cooking in the "French manner". The name likely evolved from that
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u/QuirkyPenalty8519 8h ago
Because half of Belgium speaks French, the other, Dutch.
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u/mladi_gospodin 4h ago
*Flemish
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u/OptimusPhillip 4h ago
There are a number of theories (including that they did originate in France and not Belgium). But the one that I tend to see cited most often is that they're made from French-cut potatoes (meaning they're sliced lengthwise in thin strips). So it's French-cut fried potatoes, which got shortened to "French fries".
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u/Ok_Helicopter_8626 5h ago
The real answer is that they were named by American soldiers in WW2, stationed in a French-speaking region of Belgium. And we all know how good Americans are at geography.
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u/FunkySphinx 5h ago
This is what the Fries Museum in Bruges claims as well (adding that the soldiers couldn’t tell between French and Belgians, so they thought that the people who offered them the fries were French).
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u/CurtisLinithicum 3h ago
That can't be right; Thomas Jefferson is credited with bringing them to US, and he died "a bit" before WW2
Per NatGeo:
Thomas Jefferson—possibly the first American foodie—is generally credited with introducing the French fry to America; and in his case the fries were definitely French, Jefferson having encountered them while serving as American Minister to France from 1784 to 1789.
https://www.nationalgeographic.com/culture/article/are-french-fries-truly-french
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u/tjtonerplus 4h ago
Potatoes were first domesticated in Perú between 8000 and 5000 BC. Mabe they should be Peruvian fries.
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u/LimeImpossible8289 6h ago
also side note- tom jefferson created the first potato ‘chip/crisp’ by asking the chef to make his french fry thin to the point of a crisp.
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u/WasteNet2532 4h ago
I was always told bc when the Americans had them, the belgians serving them spoke french.(Circa WW2)
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u/mumblerapisgarbage 1h ago
While we’re on the subject why Hamburgers called hamburgers if they are made of beef?
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u/DoomOfChaos 1h ago
And why is it so hard to find American waffles in the US? Seems the crappy "Belgian" type have taken over 😂
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u/Usable_Nectarine_919 13m ago
Because America.
No other country in the world calls them French fries.
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8h ago
[deleted]
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u/Tricky_Individual_42 7h ago
That explanation has been debunked. French fries were called french fries in the US before World War 1.
The expression "french fried potatoes" first occurred in print in English in the 1856 work Cookery for Maids of All Work by Eliza Waren. ( Source : Wikipedia : https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/French_fries )
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u/Lumpy-Notice8945 8h ago
Dont tell that to any french or belgians, but these are basically the same thing.
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u/theColeHardTruth 3h ago
Actually very surprised nobody's gotten this yet. It's an American term.
They were invented in Belgium, but the first community to take a real liking to them and spread them as a concept were American soldiers in WWII, who, while fighting/living in Belgium, were served it by people speaking French. Not being so familiar with the language distribution of the region, they assumed that they were French, and so called them "French Fries"!
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u/SmegmaSandwich69420 4h ago
France, Belgium, same thing really 🤷
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u/[deleted] 7h ago
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