A cardboard sleeve of French fries with a side of ketchup.
12 August 2022
French fries are, of course, deep-fried potato slices. The name comes from association of the dish with France, and indeed, French cooks were the first to prepare potatoes in this fashion. Pommes de terre frites is attested in French by 1808, and in subsequent decades it was clipped to Pommes frites. The French name appears in English, although not nearly as often as its English counterpart, and pommes frites is attested to in English by September 1872, when it appears in London’s Frasier’s Magazine in a travelogue about a journey through France:
We have come for hospitality; what can he do? His house is full. Yet he will not hear of our walking on to la Chevreuse in the dark. Il s’adresse á madame, and the result is, that in ten minutes we are sitting down to a very good supper: soup, cutlets, delightful pommes frites, an omelette of course, goat’s milk cheese, and wine which they have sent for to the mill.
The following quotation is from a theater review in London’s Illustrated Sporting and Dramatic News from 16 February 1878. It shows that the term pommes frites was common enough to be recognized by a general audience, even if they did not grasp the niceties of French grammar. The “(sic)” is in the original:
Pythias, oft consulting a tattered edition of Joe Miller, constructs new arrangements of venerable puns, while Damon invents the “funny” incidents, such for instance as that of the canary bird crushed to death, purposely, under the heel of M. “Pommefrite,” who has been annoyed by its singing. Their imperfect knowledge of French is shown in the designation of the café keeper as “Pommer frites” (sic). If they wished to call him (in French of Paris, unto them unknown) “fried potatoes,” they should have used the compound term “pommes-frites,” but they have kept the noun in the singular (“pomme”) and the adjective (“frites”) in the plural! Damon and Pythias no doubt have plenty of French dictionaries, but apparently no French grammar.
But the association of the dish with France is older than the French term’s appearance in English. We see French fried potatoes appear in English before pommes frites. From Eliza Warren’s 1856 Cookery for Maids of All Work:
FRENCH FRIED POTATOES.—Cut new potatoes in thin slices, put them in boiling fat, and a little salt; fry both sides of a light golden brown colour; drain dry from fat, and serve hot.
And French fries is an American coinage that is in place by 12 October 1886, when it appears in an advertisement in Massachusetts’s Springfield Republican:
REMEMBER, that the place to buy Saratoga Potatoes is at No 4 Dwight street (near State), also French fries Wednesdays and Saturdays; also choice fruit and confectionery. Orders for parties, sociable, etc., a specialty. Home-made bread and pastry will soon be sold there.
A decade later, there is this ad in Boston’s Sunday Herald of 16 February 1896:
Potato Chip Fryers · · 49c
A Sheet Steel Fry Pan, with wire basket, with supports for draining; for crullers, potato chips, French fries, etc. Pan and basket only 49c.
Finally, the clipping to simply fries, or the singular fry, is in place shortly after World War II. From an ad it the Vidette Messenger of Valparaiso, Indiana, on 4 April 1947:
Try Our Delicious
HAMBURGERS
“They Hit The Spot”Small Hamburger 15c
LARGE HAMBURGER, with Fries . . 25c
Sources:
Advertisement, Vidette Messenger (Indiana), 4 April 1947, 5. NewspaperArchive.com.
Classified advertisement. Springfield Republican (Massachusetts), 12 October 1886, 1. Readex: America’s Historical Newspapers.
“General House Supplies” (advertisement). Sunday Herald (Boston, Massachusetts), 16 February 1896, 3. Readex: America’s Historical Newspapers.
Oxford English Dictionary, third edition, September 2009, s.v. French, adj. and n., December 2006, s.v. pommes frites, n.; second edition, 1989, fry, n.2.
“A Pilgrimage to Port-Royal.” Frasier’s Magazine (London), September 1872, 283. ProQuest Historical Periodicals.
“Royalty Theatre.” The Illustrated Sporting and Dramatic News (London), 16 February 1878, 526. ProQuest Historical Periodicals.
Warren, Eliza. Cookery for Maids of All Work. London: Groombridge and Sons, 1856. Google Books.
Photo credit: Santeri Viinamäki, 2018. Licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 4.0 International license.