I know what “frenching” is, but any reputable source that says “French fries” owes its name to that.
Etymoline has:
1903, American English, earlier French fried potatoes (by 1856); see French (adj.) + fry (v.). Literally “potatoes fried in the French style.” The name is from the method of making them by immersion in fat, which was then considered a peculiarity of French cooking.
And their citations seem to correspond with the OED, but I don’t have access to the OED, so cannot confirm. A cite from Spruce Eats is not what I would accept as a valid etymological source. They get lots of stuff wrong in regards to food history, in my experience. (But in this case, the cite isn’t even specifically about French fried potatoes or French fries. So nothing there is particularly objectionable, to my eye.)
I attended an event earlier this summer at a pub-restaurant type of place where I expected that at the conclusion of the proceedings, we would have a sit-down dinner (which we would each individually pay for). But the event organizer had set things up with a beautifully elegant difference; instead, course after course of hors d’oeuvres were passed around. But the thing was, having looked at the menu for this place ahead of time, I recognized most of them as being literally miniature versions of their main courses, all of which turned out to be excellent. Literally, a tasting menu being delivered, dish by dish, to each attendee.
For instance, their signature burger with smoked cheddar, caramelized onions and remoulade sauce was turned into an hors d’oeuvre by serving a miniature burger on a miniature bun (yet still an expertly done juicy medium on the burger). Their Creole Jambalaya was presented in a cup with a fork. And on and on. Pretty much their entire menu was eventually presented in miniature, at least, all those things that could reasonably be miniaturized. It was lots of fun, and I’ve been meaning to go back there except it’s quite a long and traffic-infested trip. The hosts even gave out tokens for free drinks, but since I was driving, I had to squander the tokens on diet Coke, my only regret in the whole experience.
I don’t want to hijack the thread, but seeking cultural clarification, and may just be reading too much [?too little] into previous posts. In the US do people not order food to share as a common thing? I wouldn’t do it in a restaurant where you order your own steak or pasta, but for esp Asian, Central + S American, Middle Eastern food we’d normally get half a dozen dishes for a group and people would tuck in as they land on the table.
(And happy to keep it relevant to the thread by asking if you’d send it back if it had different noodles to No 54 as pictured in the menu)
Typically at Chinese or Indian restaurants we order several dishes to share. but at the sort of place where you’ll get a single item (plus sides), like a steak or burger or taco or slab-o-fish rather than a plate full of an easily sharable dish, we’d normally each order our own.
I’ve seen pasta places that serve both ways. If they serve a bowl of pasta plus separate plates to share it out to, we call it “family style”.
A married couple or a pair of friends might split a steak and an order of eggplant Parm, though. But they have to be fairly close.
At a table-service restaurant, there might be appetizers or starter courses that are shared by the diners, but generally, each person orders their own dishes, and they aren’t generally shared with others.
There are, certainly, some restaurants that are “family style” (big platters of food that are shared), as well as ethnic cuisine restaurants where shared dishes are part of the experience, but those are the exceptions to the rule.
A lot of what we might call American cuisine, even if borrowed from other cultures, is organized to be served to individual diners. The process of sharing a meal of that design would entail getting a spare empty plate and subdividing the 3 or 4 things on one diner’s plate onto the empty plate for the other person(s) to eat. While they’re doing the same thing to their meal(s) for you. Not very convenient or practical and Americans are very practical when it comes to eating. See food, inhale food, buuurp! Then talk.
So there’s a feedback loop between the cultural habit and the nature of the food, and the manner of plating / presentation.
These tendencies were amplified by Covid. Even more often, sauce appeared in packets and not communal bottles. Straws became wrapped in protective paper. Since gig delivery companies took off, and restaurant orders largely were to go, more so with Covid, stuff was organized so it could be easily packaged.
It also depends to an extent on the particular dish - I’ve never seen a restaurant that served steak family style but I’ve seen roast beef or meatloaf or even fried chicken served family style. Thing is , in family style restaurants that serve American cuisine , it’s not that multiple single-serving meals are ordered and they are all shared and everyone gets a few bites of each. Instead, you order two or maybe three entrees for a group of 6 or 10 and the same for sides and appetizers. It’s like a certain type of Chinese restaurant where if you order soup, you get a tureen, not an individual bowl and it’s really not possible for four people to order four different soups.
It depends heavily on the type of restaurant and the style of food. “Chinese Food” is often shared, as so is pizza, and appetizers. Also in “family style” places.
But honestly, if I order a burger and fries, I might share the fries, but never the burger. Are their nations what the burger (or other sandwich) would be shared?
I associate sharing with Asian cuisines, where scooping out small portions of a large dish is the norm. You would see this in Ethiopian foods as well, just as one outside example.
I wouldn’t expect this in European cuisines. A buffet, yes, as in Smörgåsbord, but for individual dining, no. At least for entrees. Appetizers are often an exception, designed to be shared, as DrDeth said.
American customs were until recently almost entirely derived from European immigrants. Eating at home with a large family, you’d expect a bowl of mashed potatoes to be passed around or a pot of spaghetti or carvings from a roast or turkey. These habits weren’t continued at restaurants, where individual platings were always the rule.
I thought that this might change after Chinese and Indian restaurants became neighborhood commonplaces, but the culture took a swing toward individuals insisting on personalized dinners: nondairy, gluten-free, vegetarian, vegan, high spice heat, low spice heat, and the other million variations which must drive chefs crazy. You can’t find two people who want the same pizza toppings. Or pizza style. Another complete overhaul of American culture would be required to get a tableful of people to eat out of common dishes.
'Zactly. When pizza was mentioned a bit ago I was going to point out that pizza places make single pies in halves or thirds with different toppings on each portion precisely because even a couple doesn’t really want to share.
Yes, they’ll drag one of their slices off a communal pan to their individual plate. But the expectation is that the other person won’t eat any of their half or vice versa.
The only reason they’re getting a large pie with two sections of diverse toppings versus two smaller pies is the price break for big pies.
I certainly see the speshul snowflake dietary restrictions and personal customizations you mention.
Unrelated to that though, I also think of Chinese and Indian places as outfits with large menus with 20 or 40 choices. Which greatly increases the odds two people will order radically different and semi-incompatible items. So I’ll order e.g. mu shu pork and she’ll order kung pao chicken and we’ll serve ourselves from a common bowl of rice but there’s no expectation she’ll eat my pork nor me her chicken. We could, but why?
Adding in a persistent preference for which protein or how spicy just about guarantees no sharing among a couple. And so when they go out with e.g. another couple, how likely are they to share with the Jones’s when they won’t even share among themselves? Not very IMO.
Top it off with some germ-o-phobia or double-dip-o-phobia and it’s a wonder some people will eat in the same restaurant as any other human.
But, when you order take-out from a Chinese restaurant, you get a bunch of containers and each person doles out their own plate from the assortment of chow mein, chicken balls, etc.
Just as an aside, Spurlock also made a point of eventually eating everything on the McMenu, and if asked if he wanted it supersized would say “yes”. Of course, the employee is supposed to ask if th order includes an item that has a larger size. So he ate to excess which was obviously intended to make his point. And did not exercise. The result is obvious.
I have never really seen a differentiation between fries - steak, julienne, thin, curly, also seen them called wedges. The thin fries are also referred to as “restaurant fries” in the big bag of frozen fries I just bought at Costco. It’s like Inuit have 100 words for snow, Americans have 100 words for fries.
Here, you can say “chips” for fries with a meal, sometimes - ootherwise, stand-alone chips are the really thin potato chips. The story goes that a chef in the Catskills was annoyed at a customer who asked for his sliced potato fries thinner and crispier and kept sending them back, so he made them paper thin, fried then up sarcastically - and the customer loved them. Nowadays, Boston Pizza restaurants serve something similar as a side for meals, called “cactus cuts”. Go figure.
I don’t know if this is how it is everywhere in the British Isles, but when I was in Ireland a few months ago at least one pub I visited did indeed differentiate between the two. I ordered “fish and chips” and another person in the group ordered a “side of fries” to go with her meal. I received thick cut fried potatoes with my fried fish, i.e traditional British chips. The person who asked for “fries” received a basket of long, thin French fries.
