this post was submitted on 20 Nov 2024
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Anon thinks the French are posers (sh.itjust.works)
submitted 4 months ago by [email protected] to c/[email protected]
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[–] [email protected] 38 points 4 months ago* (last edited 4 months ago) (4 children)

Nobody in France calls French fries or French toast "French". We're definitely happy to attribute the fries to our Belgian friends and nobody thinks something as ubiquitous as toasts could have a single inventor. I think those are Anglo-Saxon cultural elements.

[–] [email protected] 12 points 4 months ago (3 children)

No we are not attributing fries to the Belgian, fries are french. The Belgian improved on our invention and make the best fries, but Frenchs invented it.

Content warning, a lot of french: https://www.musee-gourmandise.be/fr/musee-gourmandise/articles-de-fond?view=article&id=132:la-veritable-histoire-de-la-frite&catid=77:articles-fond

[–] [email protected] 4 points 4 months ago

As a Belgian, this is my position as well. Fries is part of the Belgian culinary culture, but it's chauvinism to claim they were invented in Belgium.

[–] [email protected] 2 points 4 months ago

The article states hypothesis and guesses, it doesn't seem to provide a definitive answer.

Its conclusion, machine translated:

In the first two chapters, we talked about the unlikely birth of the deep-fried potato, the result of a marriage between the potato, a popular vegetable par excellence, and cooking in a fat bath, reserved for high society. Where could this marriage have taken place? In a well-to-do kitchen with a fine frying pan? Impossible, as we saw earlier. Potatoes have no place there. In the home of the poor potato-eating bastard? Impossible too. They don't have enough fat.

Isn't the answer to this question to be found in the streets of Paris, where in the 18th century, itinerant merchants carried their frying pans filled with dubious grease, into which they plunged meats and vegetables smeared with doughnut batter? Or is it to be found in a rotisserie with more extensive equipment? It's a tempting hypothesis. As we know, the fried potato has spread through commerce. Wasn't it born there? Is it not a purely commercial product? The inventor of the French fried potato will probably always remain anonymous, but we can guess his trade: a merchant. We can also guess his origin: Parisian.

Pierre Leclercq

March 2009 - December 2010

[–] [email protected] 2 points 4 months ago

Like the espresso, invented by the French (express or exprés? nobody knows which one it was, but making 1 little cup at a time was new and fast), then the Italians improved it, especially with gruppo 61, group head 61. Now they have the best coffee 😔

[–] [email protected] 10 points 4 months ago

Also here we call it "cafetière à piston" not french press.

[–] [email protected] 6 points 4 months ago

FIY: French toast is the english name for pain perdu.

Also probably not "invented" by the French, but no one thinks they invented simple toast.

[–] [email protected] 5 points 4 months ago (1 children)

Anglo-Saxon cultural elements

You did your best to stamp those out back in 1066

[–] [email protected] 3 points 4 months ago (1 children)

It's still how we call this group from France.

[–] [email protected] 3 points 4 months ago (1 children)

Do you use it differently to "English"?

[–] [email protected] 2 points 4 months ago (1 children)

Maybe it is interchangeable sometimes, but English people would rather point at the UK, while Anglo-Saxons often abusively refers to UK plus majorly white former British colonies, USA, Canada, Australia and New-Zealand.

[–] [email protected] 2 points 4 months ago (1 children)

Interesting. I'd probably call that "the anglosphere", Anglo-Saxon is specifically the pre-Norman-conquest residents of what is now England.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 4 months ago (1 children)

Wouldn't the Anglosphere include every English speaking countries like South Africa, India and others?

[–] [email protected] 2 points 4 months ago

Maybe. There's also "The Commonwealth" which includes them but which the USA explicitly opted out from (by gaining independence from the British Empire before it was cool).