The history of the chicken finger

[Fat Guy]

To the best of my recollection, when I was a kid growing up in the 1970s there was no such thing as a chicken finger. Today, chicken fingers are surely one of the most popular foods -- if not the most popular food -- with American kids.

How did the chicken finger get introduced? Was it derived from McDonald's Chicken McNuggets, which I believe were introduced sometime in the early 1980s? I think I may have seen chicken fingers emerge soon after that. Does anybody know the deal here?

[Dave the Cook]

I remember deep-fried strips of chicken breast being served as bar food in the late 70s and early 80s. Whatever their marketing prowess (or maybe it IS their marketing prowess), McDonald's doesn't innovate so much as capitalize on trends that are already sufficiently underway as to prove marketability. Though I don't know the specifics, I recall McNuggets as a savvy product that made an institution out of a grass-roots food phenomenon.

[jsmeeker]

Hmmm... Maybe it started out as a regional thing? Possibly in the South?

I wouldn't think that the McDonald's McNugget would have been the starting point. Weren't they ALWAYS a formed, processed piece of chicken? Wouldn't it make more sense they were invented by some home cook someplace, using the tenderloin of the chicken breast? Then maybe a big company like McDonalds would figure out how to do it more cheaply.

[Chris Amirault]

As I suspected, chicken fingers are on mid-1960s menus at American Chinese restaurants. Click here for the Kowloon Restaurant's website, which I've been researching for an article; the "Nostalgia" link on the left will bring you to a 1960s menu with the fingers on it.

If you click on the Mandarin House menu from the 1950s, you'll see shrimp fingers, which makes me think that an economical substitution of chicken for shrimp lead to chicken fingers.

ETA: Can I just say that the menu collection at the Johnson & Wales Culinary Museum and Archive totally rocks?!?

Edited March 8, 2008 by chrisamirault (log)

[scubadoo97]

Don't know when they were first introduced by my kids have become chicken finger connesseurs and have sampled them up and down both coasts of Florida and elsewhere. This was the only thing they would order when we took them out. I have to admit that there were times their order of chicken fingers was better than other menu items I've sampled at some restaurants. What's not to like about fried chicken tenders?

[heightsgtltd]

We wouldn't have the chicken finger without it's older brother the fish stick

[Chris Amirault]

Do you know that there's a distinct shared history between the fish stick and the chicken finger? Round these parts, fish sticks have been a fact of kids' school lunches for decades, whereas chicken fingers are a far more recent development. In addition, the companies that manufactured fish sticks (Gorton's of Gloucester, in particular) haven't ever been in the chicken business.

[heightsgtltd]

Do you know that there's a distinct shared history between the fish stick and the chicken finger? Round these parts, fish sticks have been a fact of kids' school lunches for decades, whereas chicken fingers are a far more recent development. In addition, the companies that manufactured fish sticks (Gorton's of Gloucester, in particular) haven't ever been in the chicken business.

←

I was not offering empirical proof, rather thinking about how both foods are used and enjoyed (i.e., kids lunches, etc.)

Fish sticks seem like the natural predecessor to chicken fingers and share a similar principle of deep fried portable food

Edited March 8, 2008 by heightsgtltd (log)

[abramer]

You can thank the late Robert C. Baker, a food scientist from Cornell University. See: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Robert_C._Baker

(And yes, I learned this from the Paul and Storm song referenced in the Wikipedia article. Sad, I know.)

ETA- Well, that's where the chicken nugget came from; not sure if he was responsible for the chicken finger or not. (Though it wouldn't surprise me.)

Edited March 10, 2008 by abramer (log)

[Chris Amirault]

But that's the nugget, not the finger -- though I'll bet that they're related someway or another....

[Lindacakes]

I think there's an important distinction between the chicken finger and the Chicken McNugget.

A chicken finger is a strip of breast meat, breaded and fried.

A Chicken McNugget and his bretheren are shreds of processed chicken product held together with meat glue.

My guess is that the McNugget came first -- because McDonald's has to adapt food to a form that can be eaten while driving. The chicken finger came after, once people realized that fried chicken taste without fried chicken bones was not a bad idea, when one is too inebriated to know the difference between meat and bone.

[Ciao Ling]

You can thank the late Robert C. Baker, a food scientist from Cornell University.  See:  http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Robert_C._Baker

(And yes, I learned this from the Paul and Storm song referenced in the Wikipedia article.  Sad, I know.)

ETA- Well, that's where the chicken nugget came from; not sure if he was responsible for the chicken finger or not.  (Though it wouldn't surprise me.)

←

Living in upstate New York, the Cornell food scientist Robert Baker's death got a lot of attention. He is the unsung inventor of what became the McNugget- by getting the breading to stick to the processed chicken. His goal in life was to popularize the consumption of poultry. He popularized ground poultry and all processed products with poultry such as turkey dogs and ham. He also created the recipe for State Fair Chicken, the key being Cornell Chicken barbecue sauce which is simple but good (apparently good enough for presidents, although I wouldn't call Bill Clinton a gourmet).

[Chris Amirault]

My guess is that the McNugget came first -- because McDonald's has to adapt food to a form that can be eaten while driving.  The chicken finger came after, once people realized that fried chicken taste without fried chicken bones was not a bad idea, when one is too inebriated to know the difference between meat and bone.

←

I think it's clear that the finger came first, though it was probably popularized after the McNugget.

[JTravel]

Thanks to my fellow Rochesterian for reminding us of the work that came out of that Cornell lab. Funny now to think that chicken needed promoting. Just out on my own in the mid 60s I can remember trying the "State Fair" chicken at a picnic. The hand written recipe spread all around as people were intrigued by the taste. It was considered a sort of strange combination in those days....but very easy and very tasty.

The recipe became a favorite of fire departments and other such groups in need of a fund raiser. Even now when traveling the side roads of western NYS in good weather you are apt to come upon a "Chicken Barbeque" sign , and you'll smell the unique aroma as the smoke blows across the road.

http://counties.cce.cornell.edu/erie/cu-bbqsauce.html

J

[maher]

im sure the chicken finger came earlier, but one of its earliest mass market forms has to be burger kings response to mcdonalds chicken mcnuggets. as soon as they got popular, burger king countered with something called chicken tenders. they advertised them as being a higher quality product, made of strips of chicken breast instead of mcdonalds processed nuggets.

[Katie Meadow]

It would be sad to think that the processed fast-food nugget, which is a way to provide a poor quality product in a crunchy inexpensive package, came before simple boneless fried breast-meat pieces. If nuggets came first, that would be sort of like, "You've seen the cartoon now read the book."

I'm guessing the motivation came long before the desire to please children (or those so sloshed they might be in danger of catching a bone in the throat) and followed the same pattern as many other fried foods that found their way into sandwiches, like fried oysters or fish, making those foods more economical and more portable. The chicken had to be boneless and sized in long pieces to fit in a roll. So my vote says the "fingers" made with real chicken right off the bone came first.

[mizducky]

im sure the chicken finger came earlier, but one of its earliest  mass market forms has to be burger kings response to mcdonalds chicken mcnuggets. as soon as they got popular, burger king countered with something called chicken tenders. they advertised them as being a higher quality product, made of strips of chicken breast instead of mcdonalds processed nuggets.

←

I realize it's a bit off on a tangent, but I couldn't help referencing here the classic

(from the 1980s, I think) slamming a competitor's processed chicken offerings. The "parts is parts" line has become inextricably stuck to all chicken-nugget type products in my mind.

I have observed certain friends' offspring being exclusively stuck on chicken fingers with the same misgivings as many of the rest of you. However, I also recall my brother going through a similar fixation when he was very young--if chicken fingers had been invented in the early 1960s, I supposed he'd have been stuck on those, but instead his monodiet was hotdogs. One night baby brother was in his high chair chowing on his hotdog, while the rest of us at the dinner table were having steak, which he had up to that point refused. Suddenly, though, he looked at us feasting happily upon big chunks of real beef, then looked at his hotdog--and then flung the frank across the room, started wailing, and wouldn't be appeased until he got some steak too. And thus was the monodiet spell broken. I dunno if/when other kids wise up about the wonderful world of food, or whether any do it quite so dramatically, but just sounding a note of hope that it does happen.

[slkinsey]

Clearly someone somewhere thought of breading and deep-drying pieces of boneless chicken breast before the introduction of the Chicken McNuggett in 1983.

For example, Chris has pointed to a 1960s era Chinese-American menu listing "chicken fingers." Whether these had much relationship to what we now think of as "chicken fingers" is another question. I wonder whether they were breading or battering these to order, or just dusting with corn starch -- which would make a very different product.

To make another example, these guys in Alabama claim to be the "original chicken finger specialist" dating back to 1978.

However, just like the "Jalapeno Popper", it strikes me as very likely that it was the availability of frozen pre-breaded chicken fingers that restaurants could drop into the fryer that made their ubiquity possible. It sounds like Robert Baker's process for adhering breading to chicken probably had something to do with making this possible, and of course it was the popularity of McDonald's Chicken McNuggets that exploded "little bits of deep fried bonelsss chicken dipped into a sauce" into the American consciousness.

My strong recollection is that "chicken fingers" didn't find their way into standard American menus until after the success of Chicken McNuggets. And I'm not sure they were called "chicken fingers" with any kind of regularity until quite some time after that. This says to me that, irrespective of any pre-McDonald's examples, for all intents and purposes the chicken finger evolved from the McNugget because they became a common part of the culinary landscape due to the industrial techniques required for fry-from-frozen chicken fingers and the popularity of McNuggets.

Edited March 12, 2008 by slkinsey (log)

[Doodad]

My first thought was that a processing innovation yielded a part that they did not quite know how to market. Especially with that white tendony piece down it. Call it a tender, hide it in breading, dip it in gluey sauce and viola........kid's food.

Although I admit a certain desire for them at times. With honey mustard. And beer.

[patti]

I knew of steak fingers long before chicken fingers. A steak finger basket, to be exact, although I can't recall the name of the place. Dairy Queen comes to mind, but I don't think that's it. At any rate, perhaps the chicken fingers has more of a connection to steak fingers than chicken nuggets.