"French Fry" as a verb

[MaxH]

I'd say "French fry" in Europe is taken as an Americanism for frites

Yep' date=' it's an Americanism. (You're referring to the singular noun.) As you can further see if you check some cookbooks, "French fried" is one of the US-traditional folk idioms for deep fried (and its most common usage -- the original, AFAIK -- is "French-fried potatoes," informally "French fries"). It has always been used interchangeably here with "deep-fat fried" and "deep fried" and, just as with broth/stock/bouillon in US, there seems no rhyme or reason, different people perhaps growing up knowing one or another (just like "skillet" and "frying pan"). I pay attention to details like that, and post them for people [i']not already acquainted with them. "Deep fried" seems to've been gradually replacing the alternatives over time.

To literally "French fry" I've encountered much less, the verb sense surfaces typically via its adjective form "French fried." To repeat, the current American Heritage Dictionary, pictured Here, defines to "French fry" as only meaning deep fry, and "French fries" as only deep-fried potatoes, without alternative meanings. The sole point that got me onto this topic on eG, and not, to my knowledge, controversial.*

However this thread has addressed wider matters and even become something of a forum among people who don't recall seeing the broader sense of "French fried" yet in cookbooks or restaurants (I assure you, you will, if you watch for it, and I also assure you that many millions of Americans are accustomed to that sense). That's somewhat separate from my own interest noted above.

* Current (2006) AHD's usage panel included the likes of Julian Bond, Joan Didion, Esther Dyson, Henry Louis Gates, Jr., William Least Heat Moon, Erica Jong, Garrison Keillor, Tracy Kidder, Maxine Hong Kingston, Armistead Maupin, Alice Munro, Robert Reich, Richard Rodriguez, Nina Totenberg, Tobias Wolff, and William Zinsser. Should you wish to petition them that in the US to "French fry" is completely archaic, or "French fried" can mean something else than deep fried, you can reach the publisher via the link above. But I caution against too quickly extrapolating personal unfamiliarity to a whole nation.

[sparrowgrass]

I don't know anything about verbs and adjectives, but I am having French-fried asparagus tips for dinner tonight!

[Country]

I don't know anything about verbs and adjectives, but I am having French-fried asparagus tips for dinner tonight!

The 1936 Fannie Farmer cookbook I mentioned above suggests that grated cheese can be mixed with the crumbs. Might be good to try on a few.

No asparagus here yet.

[CDRFloppingham]

Dictionaries seem to include whatever words that are in use whether or not they make sense or not. I like the French approach of having a ministry dedicated to preserving the language.

Sent from my Droid using Tapatalk

I think that using the French as an example for anything other than fine cuisine is a bad idea.

[IndyRob]

Google Ngram viewer is probably useful here. For example, looking at uses of "French fried" between 1900-2008, there's a steep decline starting in the 1990s. And "deep fried" has a corresponding rise in usage.

(N.B., this is a lazy man's approach, just eyeballin' it. But if it confirms the prejudices of this thread, it must be right!)

If we look at the difference between "American English" and "British English", the decline seems to come from "American English" - where the usage peaked before 1980 and then fell off dramatically. It looks like a Brit term, adopted by America for a brief time but then discarded. Recent usage in British literature seems to continue.

Edited April 20, 2011 by IndyRob (log)

[MaxH]

...It looks like a Brit term, adopted by America for a brief time but then discarded. Recent usage in British literature seems to continue.

The published record is somewhat different from that, IndyRob. I became curious about this topic after recently encountering differing perceptions about the phrase "French-fried" on eG. I've been checking hardcore printed modern and historical sources (no idea to what extent their upshots surface online -- in some cases very little certainly, because of active copyright covering the past 75 years or so -- with information like this, my experience is that sometimes you do get what you pay for). Certain landmark food books reveal the practice and thinking of the cultures they came from. (Incidentally if anyone reading this is doing related serious research, you are welcome to PM or email me to discuss.)

This inquiry (as food history research often does!) led to surprising side information that I haven't seen mentioned elsewhere. I'll add upshots to WikiGullet soon and post at least a link here. This might become an example (I'm sure others exist) of useful reference information that's online exclusively on WikiGullet. But in a nutshell, on the terminology, the phrase "French-fried" and variants have been used by major US, British, and French cookbook writers; it was extensively current in mainstream US sources for most of the 20th century; it's one among alternative phrases, never used exclusively in the US (I mentioned that in post #26 upthread); and it seems to've been particularly common in the US, other cultures having their own preferred folk idioms. (Pommes frites is especially international: its European use is not limited to le monde francophone, and it also appears in print as one of the British alternative idioms.)

Cooking potatoes this way in the US emerges as one example of a broader historical shift, which one brilliant food historian documented. US popular taste and food writing, after following English traditions closely during the colonial centuries, shifted visibly away from English and toward French cooking starting around 1800.

[Mjx]

...It looks like a Brit term, adopted by America for a brief time but then discarded. Recent usage in British literature seems to continue.

The published record is somewhat different from that, IndyRob. I became curious about this topic after recently encountering differing perceptions about the phrase "French-fried" on eG. I've been checking hardcore printed modern and historical sources (no idea to what extent their upshots surface online -- in some cases very little certainly, because of active copyright covering the past 75 years or so -- with information like this, my experience is that sometimes you do get what you pay for). Certain landmark food books reveal the practice and thinking of the cultures they came from. (Incidentally if anyone reading this is doing related serious research, you are welcome to PM or email me to discuss.)

This inquiry (as food history research often does!) led to surprising side information that I haven't seen mentioned elsewhere. I'll add upshots to WikiGullet soon and post at least a link here. This might become an example (I'm sure others exist) of useful reference information that's online exclusively on WikiGullet. But in a nutshell, on the terminology, the phrase "French-fried" and variants have been used by major US, British, and French cookbook writers; it was extensively current in mainstream US sources for most of the 20th century; it's one among alternative phrases, never used exclusively in the US (I mentioned that in post #26 upthread); and it seems to've been particularly common in the US, other cultures having their own preferred folk idioms. (Pommes frites is especially international: its European use is not limited to le monde francophone, and it also appears in print as one of the British alternative idioms.)

Cooking potatoes this way in the US emerges as one example of a broader historical shift, which one brilliant food historian documented. US popular taste and food writing, after following English traditions closely during the colonial centuries, shifted visibly away from English and toward French cooking starting around 1800.

What's remains unclear to me, however, is whether you are saying that 'french fry' is being used as a verb, or as an adjective. The adjective, I've come across plenty, the verb, honestly, no: Are you actually finding this in extensive use as a verb, at any point in time?

[Holly Moore]

I vaguely remember french fry as a verb back in my formative restaurant kitchen years, especially at Sip and Sup Drive-In where the short order cooks french fried the 50 lbs of shrimp I had to peel, devein and bread every morning.

Was thinking about the term deep fat fry, the modern day equivalent. How deep is "deep," or is "deep" superfluous? If I put a couple of inches of shortening in a frying pan, and then fry some onion rings, are they being fat fried rather than deep fat fry? I don't consider two inches to be "deep." Yet the cooking method is the same as in a restaurant fryer.

Also, throughout my hands-on restaurant years, including McDonald's, we always referred to fryers as fryers and never as deep fat fryers.

[MaxH]

Mjx, depite its title, this thread's genesis has further context which surfaces in some postings including mine. (The thread arose after I mentioned in a WikiGullet discussion with Chris that in the US, other things besides potatoes are sometimes "French fried," and he reported he hadn't seen the phrase except with potatoes. That was the original issue, another is my own point that "French-fried potatoes" means solely deep-fried, another is the historical background of "French-fried," a spin-off subject I later looked into.)

"French fry" as a verb usually appears indirectly, in its past-tense or adjective form "French fried" ("French-fried onions" are currently available in US supermarkets.) These variants are inseparable, being different grammatic forms of the same base meaning. Here's the totality of relevant entries in the current American Heritage Dictionary I cited earlier. The second, verb sense, is the one of interest:

French fry n. A thin strip of potato fried in deep fat. Often used in the plural.

French-fry tr. v. -fried, -frying, -fries. To fry (potato strips, for example) in deep fat.

In writing here, I haven't distinguished (as much as some people) the pure transitive verb from its other grammatical forms. They're different sides of the same meaning. Besides "French-fried" foods in US writing, I've seen only occasional uses of the verb "to French fry," as I mentioned upthread. And of the gerund/participial form "French frying." And so far, zero second-person verb uses (the last form listed above -- "this place French-fries all its vegetables!").

[IndyRob]

...It looks like a Brit term, adopted by America for a brief time but then discarded. Recent usage in British literature seems to continue.

The published record is somewhat different from that, IndyRob.

The published record is exactly what Google has sought to capture, and what this tool is based on. I'm very willing to consider flaws in my logic and/or dataset, but you'll have to propose reasons why your dataset is better than Google's.

[MaxH]

IndyRob, I've explained some of it already, but since you asked, will elaborate (I already offered upthread to do so privately). This isn't about "my dataset is bigger than yours" (though I can imagine various other defenses or rationalizations of Google Books -- I've been discussing online source limitations for many years).

I agree it's interesting, and very easy, to search phrases mechanistically from a large blind text corpus (whose coverage, and subject and source weighting, you don't know; where in-copyright owners, i.e. of material from about the last 75 years, have been suing Google, creating various obstacles, and gotten various opt-out means from Google books) than to check actual cookbooks and food writing, including in-copyright. I took the second approach, as more certain to hit the nail on the head.

The published record includes such standard British food overviews as André Simon's Encyclopedia (1952) and Davidson's massive Oxford Companion to Food (1999). The first doesn't mention "French fry" or "French fried" in any form, the second, in 1999, cites "chips [uS French fries]" which is fairly definitive. Meanwhile in the US, "French fried potatoes" appeared in the original (1896) Boston Cooking-School Cookbook by Fannie Farmer, recurring in later editions; likewise with the subsequent cookbook Joy of Cooking. Those two are the best-known US 20th-century cookbook titles. 115 years after Fannie Farmer, can still buy canned "French-fried" onions in US groceries.

There's more, but that illustrates the relevant published record I cited. The very famous food references clearly show French frying to be something other than "a Brit term, adopted by America for a brief time but then discarded." (Who knows what source mix Google's phrase statistics reflects.) Someone who disagrees should logically take it up with Davidson, not me.

Incidentally, by mid-19th-century, major cookbooks in both US and UK use phrases like frying potatoes "in the French manner" though not the exact form "French fried." And there's other enlightening history about both deep-frying itself and potatoes, but this post is long already.