# French Fries **URL:** \ **Category:** Cecil's Columns/Staff Reports\ **Created:** [September 4, 2002, 5:58pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/french-fries/126998 "2002-09-04T17:58:44Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 1\ **Page:** 1
**Author:** ![Bluealyson](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/b/a3d4f5/32.png) [@Bluealyson](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Bluealyson)\ **Post date:** [September 4, 2002, 5:58pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/french-fries/126998/1 "2002-09-04T17:58:44Z")
Sorry to be the one to do it, but my Belgian host family would never forgive me if I didn’t set the record straight. This story is going to sound apocryphal, but only because I’ve forgotten some of the details. I’ve heard it from a bunch of different sources, including several children’s books and one Belgian history class. “French” fries would be more properly known as “Belgian” fries. The orgins are a little bit lost in the mists of time, but it all goes back to the heydays of canal-festivals in Liège (some say Bruges). Apparently, people would have a city-wide block party by the canals every year, the highlight of which was masses of fried fish sold by street vendors and taverns. One year, round about 1839, there was a harder freeze than usual, the canals were iced over, and nobody could get at the fish for a fish-fry; some inventive chef cut little effigy-fish out of potatoes, fried them up, and sold them to delighted customers. Here’s the interesting part: the French claim the chef was a French national, therefore French fries are all part of La Patrimonie, but the Belgians insist that possession is nine-tenths of the law and so claim fries as a Belgian invention. Either way, it all happened in Flanders. -Bluealyson