No, the question is, what are French?
Trick question. They’re called patate frites normally, but everyone just calls them frites.
Correct. The “frites” part means exactly the same as “fries” (well, technically it means “fried”).
Americans just LOVE to make things sound fancier by adding “French” to the name to give it some “ooh là là”. See also: “French” vanilla ice cream (everywhere else in the world it’s just vanilla).
“French fries” is a shortening of “French fried potatoes” and they indeed came to America via France.
Actually, French vanilla is used when actual vanilla bean is used in the flavouring, if it just says vanilla its either artificial or a miniscule amount of extract.
*A Canadian who is stuck having to deal with american terms for many products.
French vanilla ice cream is vanilla ice cream in the French style. The ice cream is French not the vanilla.
French vanilla ice cream contains egg yolks.
Regular vanilla ice cream does not.
My favorite is French Toast. It’s just “golden bread”, pain doré.
Nah it’s “pain perdu” which means lost bread. It’s list because it’s too hard to eat normally anymore
Maybe it’s called that where you are? In Quebec we call French Toast “pain doré”. :)
Oh interesting
is it not pommes frites? fried apples?
My bad. I had really bad nausea when typing that. Patate frites. I messed up the pomme de terre in there.
“Frites” is a portmanteau of the words “French” and “frites”, so it’s still just “frites”.
Incidentally, when translating the word “frites” to English, you can’t be certain of how many instances of the word “French” you need to add, and the only way to be certain is to ask the original author. This has led to many difficulties in translating posthumous works.
