Oh, there are plenty of versions about how such a dish, french fries, appeared.

One of the legends - let's call this kind of version that way - says that the French fries were, of course, invented by Leonardo da Vinci. His friend and rival Amerigo Vespucci, they say, on his return from a trip to the New World, brought and presented Leonardo several gizmos, including tobacco and potatoes. Leonardo began to grow potatoes successfully, making up recipes for its preparation. So, one of the recipes was allegedly composed in such a way that the potatoes were cut into slices and fried in hot olive oil. What is this if not French fries?

Another version says that French fries were first made in Belgium in the last quarter of the 17th century. They say that the inhabitants of the Meuse River valley between the towns of Liege and Dinant were very fond of fish fried in oil, cut into thin slices, cubes. And when there was no fish, they got used to frying potatoes in the same way. Later, in the second half of the 19th century, a certain enterprising Belgian Frite began to sell such take-away potatoes. And - off we go, right up to the present day, when french fries have become a popular dish of all fast food restaurants. The very same potatoes received the name of this merchant.

This potato is also called French (in the USA). This is because during the First World War, thanks to the Belgian allies, American soldiers tried this dish. And since the Belgian soldiers were French-speaking, the potatoes were nicknamed "French".

The Americans themselves say that this is not at all the case. Say, French fries are their original invention. And they refer to 1861, when a certain George Croom served as a chef at the Saratoga Spring restaurant in the suburbs of New York. He cooked excellently, all the visitors praised him, except for one: the railway tycoon and millionaire, old man Cornelius Vanderbilt. The richest man in America at that time in Crum's dishes was not satisfied with everything: either the meat was not fried, then the soup was cold, then the greens, pancake, sluggish. It was not to please the old man with his bad character.

Once a fastidious old man brought the Saratoga Spring cooks to white heat by returning a dish of potatoes to the kitchen three times. Say, he was cut too coarsely. Then Krum himself chopped the potatoes into very thin slices and fried them in oil. Say, he wanted smaller, old bastard - get it! However, this demarche of the chef not only did not completely anger Vanderbilt, but caused a completely opposite reaction. The old man eagerly swallowed the potatoes and was satisfied, which has never happened! So a new dish appeared ... True, exactly the same legend is told about the appearance of potato chips, but the essence is the same: potatoes in thin slices, fried in oil - an invention of the Americans!

Such potatoes began to be fried soon in many restaurants in America, and then in the whole world. And then there were fries in bags ...

They say a lot about french fries. They say that stimulants and pesticides made this dish harmful, the oil for frying French fries is not of high quality and is used several times, and the potatoes themselves were frozen before cooking and lost all their benefits.

But it’s delicious, damn it! Plus, fries can be made quite easily at home. Fresh tubers and good oil ...

It seems that potatoes have always been on our table. Its cheapness and ease of preparation make the chefs of "gourmet cuisine" indulge in the miracle vegetable and leave the preparation of potato dishes at the mercy of fast food and housewives. However, just a few centuries ago, Europe did not even have an idea about potatoes - it came from the New World along with other vegetables that are now familiar to us - tomatoes, corn and bell peppers.

There is evidence that potatoes were grown in Peru and Bolivia as early as 2,000 years ago. It was a hopeless plant growing at high altitudes. the culinary dictionary characterizes wild potatoes as "a plant with small, ugly, knobby tubers, profuse flowering and a bitter taste." There are many varieties of wild potatoes, and some of them grow 4000 meters without freezing. Wild potatoes are still dug up and eaten by the natives of South America, preferring to spend time cultivating bitter tubers rather than planting cultivars.

Europeans first encountered potatoes in 1537 in what is now Colombia. Spanish troops under the command of the gallant hidalgo Gonzalo Jimenez de Quesada entered the deserted Indian village. The natives prudently fled, leaving even food supplies behind. While looting, the Spaniards discovered the corn they already knew and some knobby tubers, which they called "truffles." They described these "" as "delicious, loved by the Indians and even good for the Spaniards."

The potato was brought to Spain and Italy in the 1550s. But in the warm Mediterranean climate, potatoes did not grow well and did not become a favorite dish in those parts. As shown history, true admirers and eaters of potatoes lived to the north.

The emergence of potatoes in Great Britain and Ireland is associated with Sir Walter Raleigh and the pirate Francis Drake. But whoever brought potatoes to foggy Albion, already in the 1590s, they began to plant them on the islands. Interestingly, Protestants in Northern Ireland and Scotland refused to grow the unknown vegetable as it was not mentioned in the Bible. Irish Catholics overcame this obstacle by spraying the tubers with holy water. In the 1800s, potatoes became a staple food for the Irish. When a fungus spread in the fields, destroying the entire harvest of 1840, the famous potato famine broke out in Ireland.

At first, Europeans thought that potatoes were poisonous - after all, it belongs to the nightshade family, along with belladonna and tomatoes, which were also suspected of being inedible. In 1784, the Earl of Rumford added potatoes instead of barley to his famous workhouse soup, described by Karl Marx in Capital. The count does this because potatoes are cheaper and more satisfying, but just in case, he hides from the workers that they could refuse the stew with potatoes for fear of poisoning.

Potatoes are slowly gaining recognition despite their reputation aphrodisiac- Shakespeare mentions it along with as an aphrodisiac in The Wives of Windsor. The potato took root relatively easily only in Germany and the Netherlands, where the population appreciated its yield and unpretentiousness.

The potatoes were brought to Russia by Peter I, who was a passionate innovator and Western philosopher. But as in Europe, potatoes took root with a scratch and in an extreme Russian way - with batogi and hard labor. They began to plant him voluntarily only under Catherine II.

In France, potatoes became popular thanks to the French army officer Antoine-Auguste Parmentier, who was captured during the Seven Years' War (1756-1763). His meager prison diet in Hamburg consisted of one potato. He liked the potato stew, and after his liberation, the war hero introduced him to King Louis XVI and his crowned wife, the frivolous Marie Antoinette. The queen began to wear a potato flower on her bodice and even stopped eating cakes for the sake of mashed potatoes. The fashion for potatoes swept across France. The fact that for the French the passion for potatoes did not become fleeting is evidenced by the fact that during the French Revolution, about 25 years later, the royal Tuileries gardens were turned into potato fields.

And so in 1840, French fries first appeared in Paris. Unfortunately, we do not know the name of the ingenious chef who was the first to cut potatoes into thin slices and fry them in boiling oil. The dish became immediately popular - hawkers successfully sold it on the streets of Paris as a quick snack.

French fries crossed the English Channel and were sold alongside fried fish in England. This snack is still in demand among the British. But the French invention won true popular love in the USA. Today, fast food chains McDonalds, Burger King, Wendy and others like them instilled love to the fries around the world. Over time, it was forgotten that French fries were originally from France - they became "American fries" in many countries.

Health

Many famous dishes have names associated with certain places, but not all of these names correspond to reality.

Or, some dishes and products are so connected today with a certain country that it is difficult to imagine that they were invented in a completely different part of the world. For example, we can all say that ketchup invented in the USA, and French fries in France, however, this is not entirely true.

Find out about the most unexpected details the origin of the dishes known to us, which may surprise you a lot.

French fries

In English speaking countries French fries are called French fries or french fries, however this dish was not invented in France at all... According to some sources, fries began to be prepared at the end of the 17th century in the territory of modern Belgium.

The locals would catch small fish and fry them in oil, but in winter, when the river was frozen and it was dangerous to fish, they cut the potatoes into long cubes resembling fish and fried them. However, other sources claim that potatoes were not yet brought to that territory at that time, however, the Belgians still do not want to come to terms with the fact that fries are not their invention.

French, she was called by American soldiers during First world war when American troops came to Belgium. While French was the official language of the Belgian Army... In France and Germany, French fries are called "pommes".

Curiously, one of the national dishes of Canada is a French fries dish called Putin, however, with an emphasis on the last syllable. To President Vladimir Putin this dish has nothing to do with.

Curry powder

Yellow curry powder, which we know today - a mixture of spices ( turmeric, coriander, pepper, salt and so on), which has nothing to do with the original spice which she imitates. In India, a similar mixture is called masala and it is presented in various variations.

The British started making curry when they tried reproduce the taste of traditional Indian food... A true Indian curry is usually made just before consumption, and its composition depends on what kind of dish is being prepared.

Cocktail cherry is not a cherry at all

Cocktail cherry often call Maraschino cherry, this name sounds somehow in Italian ( marasca in Italian - Cherry), but in fact this berry arrived not from Italy at all, but from Croatia... "Maraschine" is the name of a liqueur made from cherries. By the way, the maraschino cherry is not a cherry at all, but a special kind of sweet cherry, which originates precisely from the coast of modern Croatia.

Liquor "Maraschino" made from fresh cherries, which begin to ferment in their own juice, that is, they are nothing more than ours cherry.

The cocktail cherries you can buy today are produced using a completely different method and do not contain alcohol... At first they are kept in liquid calcium solution and then dipped in sweet, artificially colored syrup.

Ketchup

It seems that ketchup- an invention of the Americans, because they are used to adding it to almost all dishes, especially to potatoes, meat, eggs. However, ketchup comes from special chinese sauce made from fish.

Five hundred years ago, Chinese sailors fished somewhere off the coast of the Mekong River (Vietnam) and tried in one of the local villages sauce made from fermented anchovies... This sauce was quite popular in Vietnam at the time. The Chinese called him "ketchup"... Translated from the ancient South Minh language "ke" translates as "a fish", a "tchup" - "sauce".

In the 17th century, British merchants came to China and found there unusual sauce ketchup... They loved this sauce and brought the recipe home. The fish disappeared from the ketchup recipe, only the name remained from the original sauce. Ketchup today the world's most famous tomato sauce.

Sauerkraut

Sour or sauerkraut- a very popular dish with us, which is mainly started to be cooked and eaten late autumn, harvested for the winter. Some may think that this dish is originally Russian. Cabbage is an excellent snack for vodka; it is often eaten with potatoes. However, few people know that sauerkraut is an invention of the Chinese.

The dish was invented at the beginning of our era, it was eaten during the construction of the Great Wall of China... The only thing that separates Chinese sauerkraut from ours is that it has been fermented in rice wine. The Germans learned to make this dish without alcohol, just pouring salt and water over the cabbage. This is the recipe that stuck with us.

By the way, the English call sauerkraut by the German word - Sauerkraut, so many of them are sure that the dish is originally German.

Sauerkraut is rich in vitamins, it is easy to store and does not deteriorate for a long time, moreover, cabbage - one of the cheapest vegetables in the whole world.

Doctor's sausage

This very popular boiled sausage variety has been developed since before World War II in the 1930s... It began to be made in 1936 at Moscow processing plant named after A. I. Mikoyan... Sausage was a dietary product with a reduced fat content and was produced according to GOST from beef, pork, chicken eggs, milk and spices.

Due to the fact that this sausage was incredibly popular, a lot of fakes began to appear stuffed with starch, soy products, meat industry waste and so on. At the end of the Soviet era, it was claimed that even toilet paper was added to this sausage.

Interestingly, in Europe, this type of sausage is known as Bologna... The variety supposedly came from an Italian city Bologna, it is somewhat reminiscent of pork sausage Mortadella, the analogue of which is boiled sausage "Amateur" with pieces of bacon.

German Pie or Hermann Pie?

German chocolate cake Is a delicious dessert that is quite popular in the USA, but its name does not mean at all that it came from Germany. Its name in English sounds like German chocolate cake but the word "German" Is the last name of the person by name Sam Herman.

He did not invent the pie itself, but in 1852 he came up with a chocolate bar that was intended for baking.

For the first time, Herman's cake recipe was presented late 1950s... It was published in a Dallas newspaper and instantly gained popularity. However, few people guessed that German pie in fact pie Herman.

Baked Alaska Meringue cake with ice cream

Dessert titled "Baked Alaska" in fact was not invented in Alaska at all, but in New York, probably in the year when Alaska was sold by Russia to the United States in 1867.

Chef Charles Ranhofer who invented the dish named it "Baked Alaska" in honor of a very successful deal for the Americans. At that time, this dish was considered elite and very sophisticated, since it was very difficult to prepare ice cream in the second half of the 19th century. it was not such a familiar dessert as it is today.

Tempura

This is a popular Japanese dish. from vegetables, fish and seafood fried in batter, has Portuguese roots. Even the name itself, adopted in Japan, was borrowed from the Portuguese.

Proof that the dish was invented in Portugal is old Moorish cookbooks of the 13th century which contain tempura recipes. Word "tempura" comes from Portuguese "tempora"- time. This word was used to refer to fasting.

Sometimes Catholics were allowed to eat fish and seafood during Lent, eventually they learned to fry it in oil, probably because fried foods are generally considered more delicious.

Portuguese seafarers, including merchants and missionaries, spread tempura throughout the world, and in the 16th century, the dish reached Japan... In England, fried fish has become so popular that it has become a national dish - Fish and chips.

Who Invented French Fries? It seems that potatoes have always been on our table. Its cheapness and ease of preparation make the chefs of "gourmet cuisine" indulge in the miracle vegetable and leave the preparation of potato dishes at the mercy of fast food and housewives. However, just a few centuries ago, Europe did not even have an idea about potatoes - it came from the New World along with other vegetables that are now familiar to us - tomatoes, corn and bell peppers.

There is evidence that potatoes were grown in Peru and Bolivia as early as 2,000 years ago. It was a hopeless plant growing at high altitudes. The Oxford Culinary Dictionary describes wild potatoes as "a plant with small, ugly, knobby tubers, profuse flowering and a bitter taste." There are many varieties of wild potatoes, and some of them grow at an altitude of 4000 meters without freezing. Wild potatoes are still dug up and eaten by the natives of South America, preferring to spend time cultivating bitter tubers rather than planting cultivars.

Europeans first encountered potatoes in 1537 in what is now Colombia. Spanish troops under the command of the gallant hidalgo Gonzalo Jimenez de Quesada entered the deserted Indian village. The natives prudently fled, leaving even food supplies behind. While looting, the Spaniards discovered the corn they already knew and some knobby tubers, which they called "truffles." They described these "truffles" as "delicious, loved by the Indians and even fit for the Spaniards."

The potato was brought to Spain and Italy in the 1550s. But in the warm Mediterranean climate, potatoes did not grow well and did not become a favorite dish in those parts. As history has shown, true admirers and eaters of potatoes lived to the north.

The emergence of potatoes in Great Britain and Ireland is associated with Sir Walter Raleigh and the pirate Francis Drake. But whoever brought potatoes to foggy Albion, already in the 1590s, they began to plant them on the islands. Interestingly, Protestants in Northern Ireland and Scotland refused to grow the unknown vegetable as it was not mentioned in the Bible. Irish Catholics overcame this obstacle by spraying the tubers with holy water. In the 1800s, potatoes became a staple food for the Irish. When a fungus spread in the fields, destroying the entire harvest of 1840, the famous potato famine broke out in Ireland.

At first, Europeans thought that potatoes were poisonous - after all, they belong to the nightshade family, along with belladonna and tomatoes, which were also suspected of being inedible. In 1784, the Earl of Rumford added potatoes instead of barley to his famous workhouse soup, described by Karl Marx in Capital. The count does this because potatoes are cheaper and more satisfying, but just in case, he hides from the workers that they could refuse the stew with potatoes for fear of poisoning.

The potato has been slowly gaining recognition despite its reputation as an aphrodisiac - Shakespeare mentions it along with vanilla as an aphrodisiac in The Wives of Windsor. The potato took root relatively easily only in Germany and the Netherlands, where the population appreciated its yield and unpretentiousness.

The potatoes were brought to Russia by Peter I, who was a passionate innovator and Western philosopher. But as in Europe, potatoes took root with a scratch and in an extreme Russian way - with batogi and hard labor. Voluntarily they began to plant him only under Catherine II.

In France, potatoes became popular thanks to the French army officer Antoine-Auguste Parmentier, who was captured during the Seven Years' War (1756-1763). His meager prison ration at the Hamburg fortress consisted of one potato. He liked the potato stew, and after his liberation, the war hero presented the tubers to King Louis XVI and his crowned wife, the frivolous Marie Antoinette. The queen began to wear a potato flower on her bodice and even stopped eating cakes for the sake of mashed potatoes. The fashion for potatoes swept across France. The fact that for the French the passion for potatoes did not become fleeting is evidenced by the fact that during the French Revolution, about 25 years later, the royal Tuileries gardens were turned into potato fields.

And so in 1840, French fries first appeared in Paris. Unfortunately, we do not know the name of the ingenious chef who was the first to cut potatoes into long and thin slices and fry them in boiling oil. The dish became immediately popular - hawkers successfully sold it on the streets of Paris as a quick snack.

French fries crossed the English Channel and were sold alongside fried fish in England. This snack is still in demand among the British. But the French invention won true popular love in the USA. Today, fast food chains McDonalds, Burger King, Wendy and others like them have instilled a love of fries around the world. Over time, it was forgotten that French fries were originally from France - they began to be called "American fries" in many countries.

Probably, there is no person on Earth who would not like French fries, which are not in vain considered one of the most popular snacks. These potatoes are cut into thin slices for cooking, which are then fried in a decent portion of vegetable oils, which are mainly sunflower or olive oil. Since a lot of oil is required for frying, such frying is done most often in a special dish - a deep fryer.

French fries are considered to be a primordially American dish, but in fact they came to America and the world from Europe, more precisely - from Belgium, at the end of the seventeenth century. This wonderful dish got to America through the Belgian allies during the First World War, then it got its final name French Fries - French, because the Belgian soldiers communicated among themselves in French, and the name Fries came from the name of the entrepreneur who first organized the sale of delicious potato slices in 1861. Crispy potato slices can be made with a minimal amount of food usually found in every home. First of all, this is the correct variety of potatoes, in no case is it young and not too starchy potatoes. Peel the potatoes and cut them into centimeter-by-centimeter cubes. Then the potato slices are breaded in flour and dipped in heated oil - and that's it, in a few minutes the crispy fried potatoes will be on your table!

Only those who are preparing to cook fries for the first time need to remember the unshakable rule - put the potatoes in a saucepan in small portions, so that all the potatoes are evenly covered with oil. If you put all the prepared potatoes in a saucepan, you get a sticky and uncooked potato mass, which has nothing to do with mouth-watering crispy slices. It is also impossible to salt French fries during the cooking process, otherwise it will not crunch - it is better to salt such potatoes immediately before serving. Now it is possible to avoid even the minimal labor associated with cooking french fries, such as peeling and slicing potato tubers - you just need to buy frozen semi-finished potato products in the store, and you just need to load the already prepared frozen slices into a saucepan with boiling oil. Thus, the cooking time for such potatoes is reduced to almost zero, which is important given the total lack of time among modern people.

It is quite clear that with an abundance of frozen convenience foods in stores, few people will want to peel and cut potatoes, when there is always the opportunity to buy frozen fries without hassle. Not surprisingly, sales of frozen potatoes in retail chains have doubled! And this is a global trend, when the consumption of natural potatoes is rapidly decreasing, and people are switching to semi-finished products. Therefore, it is becoming increasingly necessary to expand the production of frozen fries in order to maximize consumer satisfaction. However, do not forget about the high calorie content of such potatoes - and in order to avoid extra calories in the dish, if possible, the fried potatoes should be spread on a paper napkin that will absorb all the excess fat. This rule applies to both natural potatoes and potato semi-finished products.