this post was submitted on 29 Sep 2023
1424 points (98.6% liked)

Memes

45544 readers
413 users here now

Rules:

  1. Be civil and nice.
  2. Try not to excessively repost, as a rule of thumb, wait at least 2 months to do it if you have to.

founded 5 years ago
MODERATORS
 
top 50 comments
sorted by: hot top controversial new old
[–] [email protected] 68 points 1 year ago (1 children)

French is actually the language of the fries.

[–] [email protected] 18 points 1 year ago (4 children)

Curious, so why is it I never heard them talk in French?

[–] [email protected] 40 points 1 year ago (2 children)
load more comments (2 replies)
load more comments (3 replies)
[–] [email protected] 67 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago) (3 children)

2003 Americans: "Freedom made this"

load more comments (3 replies)
[–] [email protected] 56 points 1 year ago (1 children)

The term "frenching" is also a culinary term that means preparing food for even cooking and to make it visually appealing.

[–] altima_neo 18 points 1 year ago (1 children)

Man, we did that in middle school too

[–] [email protected] 15 points 1 year ago (1 children)

Even though we werent visually appealing...

load more comments (1 replies)
[–] [email protected] 48 points 1 year ago (1 children)

Isn't it short for french-cut fried potatoes and had nothing to do with France at all?

[–] [email protected] 13 points 1 year ago (1 children)

Well, France developed the cut. No?

[–] [email protected] 10 points 1 year ago

Eh, they just liked it a lot. But they definitely popularized it and detailed usages of it in books. They didn't invent "cut it long and thin" though, since that's just basic knife work whose origin is lost to time.

[–] [email protected] 44 points 1 year ago (6 children)

Potatoes are a food native to the Americas and the Belgians claiming them is cultural appropriation. French fries are Chilean.

load more comments (6 replies)
[–] [email protected] 32 points 1 year ago (1 children)

Fun fact: what's known in the US as "Danish pastries" are known in Denmark as wienerbrød (Vienna bread) and it turns out that both terms have some merit:

It was invented in Copenhagen by immigrants from Vienna

[–] [email protected] 11 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago) (1 children)
load more comments (1 replies)
[–] [email protected] 31 points 1 year ago (4 children)

I was curious about French Toast the other day. Turns out it was invented by someone with the last name French and the intention was to call it French's Toast. But when he printed the name, he forgot the apostrophe and 'S'!

[–] altima_neo 18 points 1 year ago (2 children)

Similar story with German chocolate cake. It was German's chocolate cake. A guy named German.

[–] [email protected] 13 points 1 year ago

And Black Forest cake was actually created by Forest Whitaker.

load more comments (1 replies)
load more comments (3 replies)
[–] [email protected] 27 points 1 year ago (15 children)

Who wants to claim our Brussels Sprouts? Go ahead, take them. Nobody? Well well well.

load more comments (15 replies)
[–] [email protected] 26 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago) (3 children)

In Poland we have Greek style fish, Ukrainian borscht and Russian pierogi. None of which have anything to do with the place they are named after.

I forgot about French pastry. Which I just puff pastry, but we call it French pastry for some reason. Doesn't it come from Ireland?

load more comments (3 replies)
[–] [email protected] 22 points 1 year ago (2 children)

But... alliteration is always awesome.

[–] [email protected] 15 points 1 year ago (1 children)

We could have called them Flemish fries.

[–] [email protected] 14 points 1 year ago (1 children)

Even as a homophone, I don't want the word phlegm associated with my salty snacks.

Don't call me homophonobic though, I support phonemes of all stars, stripes, and identities.

[–] [email protected] 11 points 1 year ago (4 children)

What about Flanders fries then?

load more comments (4 replies)
load more comments (1 replies)
[–] [email protected] 22 points 1 year ago (11 children)

Hot dogs are bastardized from three separate Germanic names. Frankfurt sausages sounded a bit formal, so you got "hot dachshunds," except Americans could neither spell nor pronounce the name of that breed, so you get "hot dogs." If you asked what a hot dog was you'd probably be told it's a wiener on a bun, where the English word "wiener" is a loanword from the German conjugation of "from Vienna." And we've come full circle by routinely referring to dachshunds as wiener dogs.

The less-fun tangent about the prominence of German food in American culture is that New York was famed for its wealthy German-American families until all their wives and children were on a boat that sank. I am not joking.

[–] [email protected] 10 points 1 year ago (3 children)

Quick note, just to be a pedantic arsehole: conjugation is specific to verbs. The general term is declension, which includes conjugation, but more broadly refers to the changing of a word depending on its semantical context

load more comments (3 replies)
[–] [email protected] 8 points 1 year ago (1 children)

Survivors reported that the life preservers were useless and fell apart in their hands, while desperate mothers placed life jackets on their children and tossed them into the water, only to watch in horror as their children sank instead of floating. Most of those on board were women and children who, like most Americans of the time, could not swim; victims found that their heavy wool clothing absorbed water and weighed them down in the river.[9]: 108–113 

t was discovered that Nonpareil Cork Works, supplier of cork materials to manufacturers of life preservers, placed 8 oz (230 g) iron bars inside the cork materials to meet minimum content requirements (6 lb (2.7 kg) of "good cork") at the time. Nonpareil's deception was revealed by David Kahnweiler's Sons, who inspected a shipment of 300 cork blocks.[5]: 71–72  Many of the life preservers had been filled with cheap and less effective granulated cork and brought up to proper weight by the inclusion of the iron weights. Canvas covers, rotted with age, split and scattered the powdered cork. Managers of the company (Nonpareil Cork Works) were indicted but not convicted. The life preservers on the Slocum had been manufactured in 1891 and had hung above the deck, unprotected from the elements, for 13 years.[9]: 118–119 

What a disaster, fuck

load more comments (1 replies)
load more comments (9 replies)
[–] [email protected] 17 points 1 year ago (3 children)

It has been established that the earliest recorded recipes of fries are French.

[–] [email protected] 25 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago) (6 children)

Which is debated as there are signs that point towards Spain having done it first. Then there's the fact that Belgium says they developed it first, not the French, and that remains hotly debated.

It's almost like people aren't entirely sure where French fries came from yet north America insists on calling them French anyway. Wonder if a meme can be made from that?

[–] [email protected] 29 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago) (1 children)

@Stamets

I’ll simplify things for you. I invented french fries. Anyone who says otherwise is a dirty liar

[–] [email protected] 12 points 1 year ago (6 children)

Without knowing anything at all about the subject, except for where potatoes come from: Can we even be sure that native Americans didn't do them first?

load more comments (6 replies)
[–] [email protected] 11 points 1 year ago

I always thought they were called French fries because they're French style, as in cut into long thing pieces. Til!

load more comments (3 replies)
[–] [email protected] 11 points 1 year ago (1 children)

Belgians: And I took that personally…

load more comments (1 replies)
[–] [email protected] 8 points 1 year ago (1 children)

It doesn't matter, Belgians are making much better fries than French. They deserve the recognition.

load more comments (1 replies)
[–] [email protected] 15 points 1 year ago

No, Freedom made this.

[–] [email protected] 10 points 1 year ago (1 children)
[–] [email protected] 27 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago) (2 children)

That's the Belgian flag. But don't worry, they are so rare and tiny, that it doesn't make a difference. We eat more Pommes in Germany anyway!

[–] [email protected] 19 points 1 year ago (2 children)
load more comments (2 replies)
load more comments (1 replies)
[–] [email protected] 9 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago) (1 children)

Actually...my nation made it. Every popular food item you can think of actually.

Then I spread them around your planet and had my agents whisper in people's ears to say things about them all.

load more comments (1 replies)
[–] [email protected] 8 points 1 year ago (2 children)

We call them pommes frites in Denmark

load more comments (2 replies)
[–] [email protected] 8 points 1 year ago

Oh hey, OpenDyslexic font.

load more comments
view more: next ›