# the lowly potato and french cuisine

**URL:** <https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-lowly-potato-and-french-cuisine/127074>\
**Category:** Cecil's Columns/Staff Reports\
**Created:** [September 5, 2002, 3:05am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-lowly-potato-and-french-cuisine/127074 "2002-09-05T03:05:30Z")\
**Posts on this page:** 1\
**Page:** 1

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**Author:** ![pufnstuff](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/p/c67d28/32.png) [@pufnstuff](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/pufnstuff)\
**Post date:** [September 5, 2002, 3:05am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-lowly-potato-and-french-cuisine/127074/1 "2002-09-05T03:05:30Z")

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Being both a sometime practicer of the culinary arts and a modest french speaker, I thought I had to correct you on one point.  
A little elemantary research might yield that the potato in french is the _pomme de terre_. I learned that in French 101. :rolleyes:  
Thus the proper name of the french fry in it’s native tongue, as it were, is the _pomme de terre en frite’_  
It should also have been noted that whatever unknown french chef who first fried the potato in hot oil was borrowing from a portuguese technique.