# Brit-speak: if Chips==Fries, then ??==Chips **URL:** \ **Category:** Factual Questions\ **Created:** [May 16, 2005, 5:53pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/brit-speak-if-chips-fries-then-chips/304099 "2005-05-16T17:53:51Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 20\ **Page:** 8
**Author:** ![Anne\_Neville](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/a/b9e5f3/32.png) [@Anne\_Neville](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Anne_Neville)\ **Post date:** [May 18, 2005, 7:26pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/brit-speak-if-chips-fries-then-chips/304099/141 "2005-05-18T19:26:52Z")
> [@Rayne Man](#): > > BTW, if a recipe asks for something like “2 pounds of potatoes” how do you measure these out if you don;t have kitchen scales? Our recipes normally don’t call for a certain weight of ingredients. In the case of potatoes, it would usually say something like “1 large or 2 medium potatoes”. (nitpick: it would probably also specify russet or boiling potatoes) If it was something that could be put into a measuring cup, the recipe would have the amounts in cups. The only thing I’ve ever seen measured by weight in an American recipe is meat, poultry, or fish. And those we just buy by the pound, or guesstimate. ---
**Author:** ![Anne\_Neville](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/a/b9e5f3/32.png) [@Anne\_Neville](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Anne_Neville)\ **Post date:** [May 18, 2005, 7:40pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/brit-speak-if-chips-fries-then-chips/304099/142 "2005-05-18T19:40:07Z")
> [@KGS](#): > > “Pie” can also refer to pizza, which I believe is a different thing in the UK as well. I had pizza in the UK, at a place in Manchester when I went there in 2000. IIRC, it was a thin-crust pizza, with fairly sweet tomato sauce and cheese of some sort (mozzarella, I guess). But it was not all that different from pizzas I’ve had in the US, and certainly not something I’d call anything other than pizza. Also on that trip, I got a Starbucks barista in London to give me a really strange look. I was trying to get a coffee drink made with skim milk. This is common here, but he looked at me like he’d never heard of such foolishness. Is it really so uncommon to order coffee drinks with skim milk there? ---
**Author:** ![Dragonblink](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/d/b9bd4f/32.png) [@Dragonblink](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Dragonblink)\ **Post date:** [May 18, 2005, 8:03pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/brit-speak-if-chips-fries-then-chips/304099/143 "2005-05-18T20:03:35Z")
> [@silenus](#): > > Impromptu quiz of my 1st and 2nd period classes: Sucker: 59 Lollipop: 4. Of those 4, 3 of them have parents from back East. So they are suckers in Southern California! (Let the jokes begin!) 😃 Jus’ thought I’d mention that I usually hear them referred to as lollipops, and that’s what I call them, although it’s not uncommon for me to hear sucker as well. While my accent isn’t typically Southern Californian, my vocabulary usually is, so sucker probably isn’t universal in SoCal, or at least not in my corner of the LA area. ---
**Author:** ![Acsenray](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/acsenray/32/4519_2.png) [@Acsenray](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Acsenray)\ **Post date:** [May 18, 2005, 8:16pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/brit-speak-if-chips-fries-then-chips/304099/144 "2005-05-18T20:16:16Z")
> [@Dragonblink](#): > > so sucker probably isn’t universal in SoCal, or at least not in my corner of the LA area. Well it’s not even _universal_ in the places I’m talking about. Personally, I say lollipop. But sucker was more common. ---
**Author:** ![Queen\_Bruin](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/q/e274bd/32.png) [@Queen\_Bruin](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Queen_Bruin)\ **Post date:** [May 18, 2005, 8:26pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/brit-speak-if-chips-fries-then-chips/304099/145 "2005-05-18T20:26:39Z")
North LA County person checking in (but spent 7 years in Western Colorado). I’ve always said sucker, and **The Highwayman** says he always has, too (he was born and raised in the San Gabriel area). And am I the only one familiar with the Mexican sucker (or lollipop) known as _Chupa Chups?_ (Chupa is roughly “suck” - I’m not fluent in Spanish, though). ---
**Author:** ![sewalk](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/b3f665/32.png) [@sewalk](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/sewalk)\ **Post date:** [May 18, 2005, 8:41pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/brit-speak-if-chips-fries-then-chips/304099/146 "2005-05-18T20:41:01Z")
> [@The Sausage Creature](#): > > And am I the only one familiar with the Mexican sucker (or lollipop) known as _Chupa Chups?_ Nope, they’ve propagated at least as far east as Oklahoma. See, even Hispanics call them “suckers”. 😛 ---
**Author:** ![silenus](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/silenus/32/166_2.png) [@silenus](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/silenus)\ **Post date:** [May 18, 2005, 8:42pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/brit-speak-if-chips-fries-then-chips/304099/147 "2005-05-18T20:42:31Z")
> [@The Sausage Creature](#): > > And am I the only one familiar with the Mexican sucker (or lollipop) known as _Chupa Chups?_ (Chupa is roughly “suck” - I’m not fluent in Spanish, though). I used to buy Buffy the Vampire Slayer Chupa Chups by the bucket to use as classroom rewards. TonguePainters. Tres cool. 😃 ---
**Author:** ![chaoticbear](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/c/f07891/32.png) [@chaoticbear](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/chaoticbear)\ **Post date:** [May 18, 2005, 8:43pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/brit-speak-if-chips-fries-then-chips/304099/148 "2005-05-18T20:43:42Z")
> [@The Sausage Creature](#): > > North LA County person checking in (but spent 7 years in Western Colorado). I’ve always said sucker, and **The Highwayman** says he always has, too (he was born and raised in the San Gabriel area). > > And am I the only one familiar with the Mexican sucker (or lollipop) known as _Chupa Chups?_ (Chupa is roughly “suck” - I’m not fluent in Spanish, though). Nope, I know them too, but didn’t know they were Mexican. ---
**Author:** ![Chronos](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/chronos/32/134_2.png) [@Chronos](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Chronos)\ **Post date:** [May 18, 2005, 8:48pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/brit-speak-if-chips-fries-then-chips/304099/149 "2005-05-18T20:48:55Z")
In Cleveland when I was growing up, “sucker” and “lollipop” were both used, “lollipop” a bit more. Pretty much anything which has sugar as the first ingredient is “candy”, here. This includes chocolates, sugar candies (the kind you make lollipops out of), gummy worms/bears/fish/whatevers, jelly beans, etc. For comparison, what would a Brit call the wares of that shop that Harry Potter is always sneaking off to? A candy bar, however, always includes chocolate as a major ingredient. It might also contain nougat, caramel, baked stuff, crisped rice, various nuts, etc., but it always contains chocolate. A chocolate bar is not necessarly pure chocolate, but it’s predominantly so: It may also contain nuts (most commonly almonds or peanuts), crisped rice, etc. I was not aware of the existance of apple jelly, and I can see that it would be completely different from apple butter, but it can’t be too common, at least anywhere I’ve lived. ---
**Author:** ![mittu](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/ecd19e/32.png) [@mittu](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/mittu)\ **Post date:** [May 18, 2005, 8:50pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/brit-speak-if-chips-fries-then-chips/304099/150 "2005-05-18T20:50:09Z")
Chupa Chups are sold in the U.K. too, we call them lollies, didn’t know they were mexican though. ---
**Author:** ![silenus](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/silenus/32/166_2.png) [@silenus](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/silenus)\ **Post date:** [May 18, 2005, 8:52pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/brit-speak-if-chips-fries-then-chips/304099/151 "2005-05-18T20:52:30Z")
> [@Chronos](#): > > A candy bar, however, always includes chocolate as a major ingredient. It might also contain nougat, caramel, baked stuff, crisped rice, various nuts, etc., but it always contains chocolate. So a [Zero Bar](http://snickers99.tripod.com/zerobar.html) isn’t a candy bar? ---
**Author:** ![Scott\_Plaid](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/258eb7/32.png) [@Scott\_Plaid](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Scott_Plaid)\ **Post date:** [May 18, 2005, 9:00pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/brit-speak-if-chips-fries-then-chips/304099/152 "2005-05-18T21:00:25Z")
I see cocoa butter on the ingredience list, but that’s just nit picking. ---
**Author:** ![sewalk](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/b3f665/32.png) [@sewalk](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/sewalk)\ **Post date:** [May 18, 2005, 9:13pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/brit-speak-if-chips-fries-then-chips/304099/153 "2005-05-18T21:13:42Z")
What about a _Payday_. No chocolate or cocoa. Still a candy bar but not a chocolate bar. You’re right about apple jelly, though. I do have to hunt for it sometimes. ---
**Author:** ![Beware\_of\_Doug](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/b/278dde/32.png) [@Beware\_of\_Doug](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Beware_of_Doug)\ **Post date:** [May 18, 2005, 9:20pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/brit-speak-if-chips-fries-then-chips/304099/154 "2005-05-18T21:20:10Z")
> [@LorieSmurf](#): > > Americans, at least in the southern part of the US, do distinguish between _white_ gravy and _brown_ gravy. The brown gravy is the kind made with meat juices. White gravy is made of flour, milk, black pepper, and often has sausage in it. And somewhat less often has sausage drippin’s in it, and seldom if ever has discernible flavor in it. Especially the kind they pour on chicken fry steaks. If that tastes like anything but highly peppered wallpaper paste, they made it wrong. > [@Jeff Lichtman](#): > > In my experience, Americans rarely use the word “maize,” Unless they’re from [Michigan](http://www.umich.edu/~newsinfo/MT/96/Fall96/mta13f96.html), that is. ---
**Author:** ![Nunavut\_Boy](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/n/e95f7d/32.png) [@Nunavut\_Boy](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Nunavut_Boy)\ **Post date:** [May 18, 2005, 9:21pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/brit-speak-if-chips-fries-then-chips/304099/155 "2005-05-18T21:21:57Z")
Hmm…Canadian food is a lot more similar to British food than I would have thought. We have squadrons of scones at the store, I’d never had biscuits 'till I went to Texas. We have many HP aficionados (myself included) and we call them chocolate bars no matter what’s in 'em. Yorkshire pudding? YUM! 'Course, when you guys were on about kicking the British out of your country, we decided we liked them. We still do; we even have little pictures of their mom or whoever she is on our money! 😃 ---
**Author:** ![silenus](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/silenus/32/166_2.png) [@silenus](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/silenus)\ **Post date:** [May 18, 2005, 9:27pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/brit-speak-if-chips-fries-then-chips/304099/156 "2005-05-18T21:27:54Z")
> [@Scott Plaid](#): > > I see cocoa butter on the ingredience list, but that’s just nit picking. Yeah, but it’s the next-to-last item listed…hardly “a major ingredient.” ---
**Author:** ![OxyMoron](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/o/e9a140/32.png) [@OxyMoron](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/OxyMoron)\ **Post date:** [May 18, 2005, 10:02pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/brit-speak-if-chips-fries-then-chips/304099/157 "2005-05-18T22:02:18Z")
I’m finally home to consult my Oxford Companion to Food (Davidson), which I highly recommend. The **biscuit** entry runs to some 40 dense but entertaining column-inches - what follows is an excerpt: > [@](#): > > **Biscuit** is a word which covers a vast range of flour-based items, generally small in size, thin, and short or crisp in texture. A more precise definition is difficult, as Garrett (\*c.\*1898) discovered; he concluded that a crisp or brittle texture was the only shared characteristic and that ‘Pastrycooks and confectioners, both British and foreign, appear to have mutually agreed to retain this feature as the only one necesessary to distinguish a tribe of kinds which differ from each other in almost every other particular.’ However, he had reckoned without N. America, where ‘biscuit’ means a soft, thick, SCONE (_q.v._)-type product, and the words COOKIE (_q.v._) and CRACKER (_q.v._) are used for items similar to English biscuits. (In modern Britain the application of the word ‘biscuit’ to breads which are soft and fresh has survived on Guernsey, and in the north-east of Scotland, where ‘soft biscuits’ are flat buns made from bread dough kneaded with butter and sugar. This is possibly the origin of the N. American habit of referring to scones as biscuits.)… > > The name ‘biscuit’ is derived from the latin _panis biscoctus_, ‘bread twice cooked’. This name was applied to such products as RUSKS (_q.v._), made from plain dough baked in a loaf, cooled, sliced, and then dried in gentle heat to give a crisp, dry product which kept well. Double cooking was also used for SHIP’S BISCUIT (_q.v._), a durable staple food made from stiff flour and water dought for sailors on long voyages and armies on campaign. The Italians produced this type of _panis biscoctus_ commercially in the Middle Ages. Sadly, the book doesn’t really cover American biscuits, other than the beaten biscuits which, it rightly notes, are a Southern speciality and not one I’ve seen very often. The probable reason is that a key step is beating the dough for at least a half-hour or so until it blisters. I recall a late-sixties Time-Life series on American regional cooking, which included a photograph of the Maryland First Lady beating her biscuit dough with an ordinary hammer. ---
**Author:** ![Jeff\_Lichtman](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/jeff_lichtman/32/1531_2.png) [@Jeff\_Lichtman](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Jeff_Lichtman)\ **Post date:** [May 18, 2005, 10:40pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/brit-speak-if-chips-fries-then-chips/304099/158 "2005-05-18T22:40:40Z")
> [@silenus](#): > > Yeah, but it’s the next-to-last item listed…hardly “a major ingredient.” Also, cocoa butter is not chocolate. Most of the flavor of chocolate is in the cocoa solids, not the cocoa butter (which is the fat component of chocolate). Other non-chocolate candy bars (see [Old Time Candy web site](http://www.oldtimecandy.com/CandyList.htm) ) include Abba-Zaba, Big Hunk, strawberry and vanilla Charleston Chews, Zagnuts, Chick-O-Sticks and Bit O’Honey. Here’s another bit o’data in the lollypop/sucker debate: a giant piece of hard candy on a stick is called an “all-day sucker.” I have never heard it called an “all-day lollypop.” While we’re at it, let’s argue about whether the side dish that’s cooked inside a turkey is called “dressing” or “stuffing,” and whether fluffy potatoes are “mashed” or “whipped.” ---
**Author:** ![Queen\_Bruin](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/q/e274bd/32.png) [@Queen\_Bruin](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Queen_Bruin)\ **Post date:** [May 18, 2005, 10:49pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/brit-speak-if-chips-fries-then-chips/304099/159 "2005-05-18T22:49:04Z")
> [@The Sausage Creature](#): > > North LA County person checking in (but spent 7 years in Western Colorado). I’ve always said sucker, and **The Highwayman** says he always has, too (he was born and raised in the San Gabriel area). > > And am I the only one familiar with the Mexican sucker (or lollipop) known as _Chupa Chups?_ (Chupa is roughly “suck” - I’m not fluent in Spanish, though). :smack: They’re Spanish. I got it wrong. ---
**Author:** ![sewalk](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/b3f665/32.png) [@sewalk](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/sewalk)\ **Post date:** [May 18, 2005, 10:50pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/brit-speak-if-chips-fries-then-chips/304099/160 "2005-05-18T22:50:55Z")
> [@Jeff Lichtman](#): > > While we’re at it, let’s argue about whether the side dish that’s cooked inside a turkey is called “dressing” or “stuffing,” and whether fluffy potatoes are “mashed” or “whipped.” Cream starts as liquid and is whipped into a semi-solid state. That is whipped. Potatoes start solid and are mashed into a semi-solid state. Many cooks add milk and butter and then whip said potatoes into a fluffier consistency. That my take on potatoes. As for stuffing v. dressing, you’re on your own. [Previous page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/brit-speak-if-chips-fries-then-chips/304099.md?page=7) [Next page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/brit-speak-if-chips-fries-then-chips/304099.md?page=9)