Great news, everyone—the Idaho Potato Commission has named February as its official Potato Lovers' Month! In the commission's own words, this is a time to "explore Idaho® Potato versatility from a different and exciting angle." Some of us in the other forty-nine states sadly don't get to take all of Potato Lovers' Month off work, like they probably do in Idaho, but we can celebrate in other ways. For example, we've asked Jeopardy!'s Ken Jennings, who lives in an Idaho-adjacent state, to correct any morsels of our potato knowledge that might be a little half-baked.
The Debunker: Are French Fries French?
Your Debunker likes to supply a clear-cut answer to all questions, especially on topics of such fundamental importance to the nation as French fries. But this is one case where facts pre-date the written history, and so the origins of the humble fry are lost in the greasy mists of time. On the basis of the available evidence, I think it's unlikely that the idea of deep-frying little raw potato wedges originated in France. Here's why...
The modern potato didn't originated in Europe at all, but in the New World; it first appears in the archeological record when the ancestors of the Incas cultivated it in modern-day Chile and Peru at least 2,500 years before Christ. It traveled to Europe via the Spaniards in the early 1500s. So the French case for inventing fries hinges on the possibility that no one, in the first five thousand years of eating potatoes, ever tried slicing one up and frying it. Since we know the Spanish were frying vegetables tempura-style in the 16th century, this seems unlikely.
The modern tradition of pommes frites is sometimes said to derive from 18th-century food stalls in Paris, but this claim is vehemently opposed by the Belgians, who eat more fries per capita than anyone else in the world, and consider it to be their national dish. In the 17th century, Belgium was under Spanish rule, which makes them a likely early hotbed for potato recipes. Belgian historian Jo Gerard specifically reports a family story dating back to 1680 which holds that in the winter, when peasants in the Meuse Valley didn't have fish for their usual fish-fry, they would cut potatoes into the shape of fish and fry them instead. But if that's the case, French appropriation of the dish was certainly cemented by 1802, when Thomas Jefferson served potatoes fried "in the French manner" at a state dinner. This began a long tradition of fast food eaters in the White House that now includes Bill Clinton and Donald Trump.
During the Iraq War, when Republican Congressmen in a fit of patriotic stupidity pushed to rename French fries as "freedom fries" on cafeteria menus, the French embassy protested to The New York Times that this was misguided, because the dish is Belgian anyway. So France has been on the record since 2003 as disowning their own beloved side dish. Those guys will surrender over anything!
Quick Quiz: What controversial ingredient did McDonald's remove from its French fries in 1990?
Ken Jennings is the author of eleven books, most recently his Junior Genius Guides, Because I Said So!, and Maphead. He's also the proud owner of an underwhelming Bag o' Crap. Follow him at ken-jennings.com or on Twitter as @KenJennings.