One of the earliest references we have to British 'chips' (French Fries in the U.S.) is in Charles Dicken's 'Tale of Two Cities' (1859): "husky chips of potatoes, fried with some reluctant drops of oil."
The first reference to 'French fried potatoes' was in 1894 in O. Henry's 'Rolling Stones', “Our countries are great friends. We have given you Lafayette and French fried potatoes.”
The 'French' in French fries refers to the method of cutting the potatoes; to 'french' means to slice into thin strips.
Americans eat more than 16 pounds of french fries every year, which comes to over 2 million tons!
Both France and Belgium claim that they invented 'French Fries'. Belgians claim that their street vendors sold these 'Belgian fries' from pushcarts before the French adapted the idea in the middle of the 19th century. They crossed the Atlantic to America in the 1880s.
McDonald's uses about 7% of the potatoes grown in the United States for its French fries. They sell more than 1/3 of all the French fries sold in restaurants in the U.S. each year.
The French fries sold at McDonald's are peeled, sliced and partially cooked at factories in Idaho.
