Crisps and chips
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I love potato chips, but am not a fan of french fries, so I'm all confused when I'm in Britain where "chips" are "crisps" and "fries" are "chips"!
One reason I like potato chips is because they are salty and savory to counteract all the sweets I consume, so I keep a big box of 18 small bags of chips and Doritos, Cheetos, and Fritos on hand to rescue me from hunger pangs whenever I feel them coming on. But I dislike Pringles because they're not real.
The British take their crisps more seriously than any other nation
No other snack bridges the class divide in the same way
Economist (12/19/24)
This is a book review of Crunch: An Ode to Crisps. By Natalie Whittle. Faber; 256 pages; £18.99
GERMANS OPT for döner kebab flavour; South Koreans like theirs sprinkled with “honey butter” powder; and Canadians nibble on a dill pickle iteration. Britons prefer cheese and onion—but it is a close-run thing. According to some estimates, around 6bn packets of crisps are sold in Britain each year. Whenever Brits are feeling peckish, they reach for the low-effort, high-sodium snack, as Natalie Whittle, a journalist, observes in “Crunch”, a tasty history of the foodstuff Americans insist on calling “potato chips”.
Were it not for two British biochemists, crisps would be rather bland. Around eighty years ago, Archer Martin and Richard Synge pioneered partition chromatography, which allowed substances in complex mixtures to be singled out and identified with ease. (They won the Nobel prize for chemistry in 1952 for their efforts.) Alongside other uses, this technique helped crisp-makers map flavours and recreate them by mixing different compounds.
In the 1950s Tayto, an Irish brand, produced cheese-and-onion crisps; in America Herr’s introduced barbecue seasoning. Today there are more than 1,000 crisp flavours worldwide, ranging from mustard mayonnaise to salmon sushi, baked beans and salted egg.
Potatoes have been a staple of humans’ diets for millennia, but it took time for the crisp to take its slender shape. The tuberous vegetable was fried in lard in Regency England—and sliced and dunked in vats of olive oil in Belle Époque France—but it did not find its thinnest, crunchiest form until the late 1800s.
That is when “saratoga chips” began to appear in a swish resort town in upstate New York. (Legend has it that a disgruntled restaurant patron demanded thinner and thinner fried potatoes until the cook turned out brittle, paper-thin slices.) In 1878 a journalist declared the crisp a sensible choice for travellers and “admirable as a breakfast dish”. Mikesell’s, a company in Ohio, was soon mass-producing them.
In the early 20th century peckish Brits were still buying baked potatoes whole, and hot, from street hawkers. A canny merchant from London visited Paris in 1909 and spied a vendor selling “perles de Paris”: potato wafers fried in “delectable” amounts of oil. Impressed, he recruited the Frenchman and brought him back to London. Within a decade factories across England were churning out this type of crisp too.
Regardless of the American headstart, Ms Whittle is adamant that Britain can comfortably claim the title of most crisp-obsessed nation. Crisps help to make the humble potato Britain’s most beloved vegetable; the average household buys around 250 grams of processed potatoes a week. To the alarm of healthy-eating advocates, Britons buy more manufactured potato products, such as crisps and chips, than they do fresh greens.
Many foodstuffs are circumscribed by occasion and eater—but not crisps, which rustle between social classes. The packets can be spied on building sites, in pubs and at cocktail parties; they complete meal deals, bridge hunger gaps and fuel festivities. When the “salty siren” calls, the British take heed. ■
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I like the way you can make chips / crisps taste like almost anything on the savory side. That must mean that, by themselves (without even salt) they are fundamentally neutral, and don't pair well with sugar — thank goodness! Food processors put sugar in / on practically everything else.
Selected readings
- "Italian Red Meat Flavor potato chips" (6/12/19)
- "Retraction watch: Irish roots of "french fries"?" (5/18/24)
- "Potato crisp?" (6/5/09) — a British judge rules that Pringles are potato chips; I beg to disagree
- "Chips, fleas, lovers, colors, and crusts" (112/13/24)
- "Death by french fries" (6/18/17)
- "Gyro, part 3" (10/7/24)
- "Gyro, part 2" (9/28/24)
- "Gyro" (6/26/20)
[Thanks to Mark Metcalf]
martin schwartz said,
January 6, 2025 @ 7:21 am
A stoic friend of mine, when he came down with shingles,
quipped, "It's like Pringles, but MUCH more painful".
Omitting sermons on food (except to myself for the New Year), I shall merely wish all, good health with your. snacking; "gezinter-heyt!",
as one says in my Yiddish dialect
Martin Schwartz
Philip Taylor said,
January 6, 2025 @ 7:22 am
I love Pringles (and don't give a d@mn about them being "ultra-processed food") but the only flavour that I really like is their smokey bacon, which also happens to be my favourite when choosing "real" crisps, followed a short distance behind by anything beefy (Bovril flavour were my favourite, but they are now sadly discontinued). And (<Br.E>) "game chips", as served with roast pheasant, etc., are frequently replaced by crisps in less discerning establishments.
Phillip Helbig said,
January 6, 2025 @ 7:43 am
Chips and crisps, fries and chips, bonnets and hoods, highways and motorways, the list goes on. Sometimes it’s just pronunciation (“shedule”), sometimes the same term with opposite meaning (“to table a motion”). Two countries separated by a common language. (Was that by H.L. Mencken?)
Actually, McDonald’s-style, long, skinny fries are also called “fries” at least in some parts of England, while “chips” are the more traditional, chunkier kind.
French fries (always capitalized?) were probably invented in Belgium. The national dish there is French fries with mussels. (Reminds me of trhe nickname of Jean-Claude Van Damme: the muscles from Brussels). Traditionally they are fried twice in beef fat.
Fans of Long John Silver’s Seafood Shoppe (where everything is great, especially the hushpuppies, except the fries) fry their stuff in peanut oil.
jin defang said,
January 6, 2025 @ 7:44 am
When visiting the US, my daughter, who lives in France but is passionately fond of chips, delights in visiting our large neighborhood supermarket with its huge selection of varieties made of ingredients like blue corn, parmesan cheese, cheddar, red pepper, jalapeno and Gaia knows what. They should come with high blood pressure warnings.
Philip Taylor said,
January 6, 2025 @ 8:01 am
I think, Phillip H., that in British English we use two different pronunciations for "schedule" depending on context — "Schedule A" (tax-related) is usually /ˈʃe dʒuːl/, "Running on schedule" is usually /ˈsked juːl/. But that may, of course, be a misapprehension on my part. Interesting, tho', that my perception of the consonant cluster in the middle also varies with the usage.
/df said,
January 6, 2025 @ 9:17 am
"highways and motorways"?
"freeways and motorways" is probably better. I think BrE "trunk road" or "main road" or "open road", or just "road", matches AmE "highway", depending on context. Like "slay", "highway" would be understood by UK speakers but rarely used, eg in the imported (?) idiom "hit the highway" or an old formulation "highways and byways".
GB Shaw is traditionally credited with "separated by a common language": what evidence there is favours "the same" over "a common" but also points to Wilde as having made a similar crack decades earlier. Surely the idea cannot have escaped previous epigrammatists?
Also and coincidentally, Brussels was the business destination that supplied the left-behinds with paprika crisps, then unavailable in the UK.
As to /ˈsked juːl/, I might hear that in a transatlantic conference call where BrE speakers are falling in with the Yanks, just as I hang a left/right in the US and turn left/right in the UK. /ˈʃe dʒuːl/ is normal for both documents and plans in my experience. One way to avoid the issue is being "on time" (or not) rather than "on schedule".
Keith Gaughan said,
January 6, 2025 @ 10:16 am
That rather underplays the importance of Tayto. It's the brand that invented proper flavoured crisps, as they invented the process for getting the flavouring to stick to the crisp rather than having to sprinkle a sachet of flavouring over the contents of the bag.
They're so critical to the Irish psyche that there was even a theme park dedicated to them for a long time! Also, there's the messy licensing situation where there are two Tayto brands on the Island, with the Northern Irish version licencing the brand from the original company in the Republic. It leads to all kinds of confusion…
Philip Taylor said,
January 6, 2025 @ 10:34 am
"as they [Tayto] invented the process for getting the flavouring to stick to the crisp rather than having to sprinkle a sachet of flavouring over the contents of the bag" — if your memory is as long as mine, Keith, you will remember when there were no "sachet[s] of flavouring" — all one had was a little blue waxed paper twist containing salt.
Ross Presser said,
January 6, 2025 @ 10:50 am
> don't pair well with sugar — thank goodness!
"BBQ flavor" is definitely sweet — too sweet in my opinion.
Robert Coren said,
January 6, 2025 @ 10:57 am
Of course one exception is that the US has imported the British combination "Fish and chips"; if one finds that on a menu, one definitely does not expect "crisps".
Jonathan Smith said,
January 6, 2025 @ 11:57 am
Things get crunchier as Pringles are "crisps" on US packaging and apparently have been since 1975 — when Wikipedia says other manufacturers complained they were not technically "chips" (cuz extruded from dough, not sliced from potatoes.) And then Pringles lawyers tried to argue in the UK (2008) that they were not technically "crisps" in that market (given unnatural shape and uh ingredients) and thus exempt from VAT. Etc.
Gregory Kusnick said,
January 6, 2025 @ 12:14 pm
When ordering fish & chips at my local burger joint, I have occasionally been asked "Do you want fries with that?"
Charles Troster said,
January 6, 2025 @ 12:46 pm
As a Canadian, I remember being surprised to find that "chips" is a bit more confusing in Australia. Potato chips you buy in a convenience store bag are still "chips". But I would often find trucks labelled as selling "fries" AND also labelled "chips". I asked a local and he said that "chips" is interpreted in context and when in doubt only "hot chips" are the cooked kind.
David Morris said,
January 6, 2025 @ 2:22 pm
On the other hand 'cold chips' are not 'crisps' but rather 'hot chips which have gone cold'.
My least favourite regular flavour is salt and vinegar, which every multi-pack has. I have to pick the flavours randomly, or I'll end up with four salt and vinegars at the end.
There are now a variety of 'vegetable snacks', like potatoes aren't a vegetable.
Victor Mair said,
January 6, 2025 @ 2:29 pm
And then there are buffalo chips.
sorry
mkvf said,
January 6, 2025 @ 2:57 pm
We also have 'game chips'. Which are exactly the same as crisps/fries, but made by hand, and served with game
Philip Taylor said,
January 6, 2025 @ 3:12 pm
See also https://languagelog.ldc.upenn.edu/nll/?p=67792#comment-1626330, mkvf.
mkvf said,
January 6, 2025 @ 3:18 pm
Noted, shouldn't skim.
David Marjanović said,
January 6, 2025 @ 3:29 pm
What is wrong with these people? Do they need better potatoes?
I actually had candied potatoes – in China. Not to my taste, but less bad than expected.
Oh, that varies. I once got to eat actual Kellogg's® cornflakes and expected them to be better than the cheap no-name versions I was used to. Instead, they were sweet. I looked at the package, and yes, there was sugar in them, unlike in any other brand of cornflakes I had encountered before.
Don't get me wrong; sometimes I want Frosties. But I don't want half-sweet stuff sprung on me when I want the taste of corn itself.
Noam said,
January 6, 2025 @ 4:14 pm
@David Marjanović Given that corn flakes were invented by Kellogg in the US, and the commercial version has apparently always had sugar (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Corn_flakes , history section), I think it’s the generic varieties that are wrong. I’m also very surprised that generic corn flakes (in the US at least) would omit sugar.
MattF said,
January 6, 2025 @ 4:28 pm
Pringles bring to mind the great SF author Gene Wolfe, whose early career as an engineer included work on Pringle manufacturing. He would allude to Pringles as ‘the only snack food with negative curvature’.
Xtifr said,
January 6, 2025 @ 4:29 pm
Actually, potatoes are regularly paired with the massive amounts of sugar found in American tomato ketchup! (Or, as I like to call it, tomato syrup.) It may not be enough sugar to qualify as "candied", but I don't think it's far off! :)
Chips Mackinolty said,
January 6, 2025 @ 4:49 pm
Across much of regional and remote Australia, and many rural and urban areas, there is an "avoidance" tradition where by the personal names of people who die are suppressed, sometimes for many years. This may be manifested in re-naming people, other descriptions of people or related to the job they do. In many contexts generic avoidance terms such kunmanara are applied.
Many years ago I was confronted by a man leaving a lock eatery eating a bag of chips. He looked at me, the food in his hand and back at me, stating: 'You know, when you die, they'll have to change the menu here!"
Name can be dead giveaways!
Philip Taylor said,
January 6, 2025 @ 5:15 pm
I confess I had no idea where your story was leading until the very last line — well done !
Barbara Phillips Long said,
January 6, 2025 @ 11:21 pm
Pringles are clearly not made from sliced potatoes, but extrusion is a common method used to make snack foods such as Doritos and Fritos, which are made from different forms of corn.
In the U.S., there are also cow chips, aka meadow muffins. These aren’t edible, unless one has a penchant for moose turd pie. (See Utah Phillips explaining this delicacy: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Q1ajLnuw2oo )
Philip Taylor said,
January 7, 2025 @ 4:48 am
Are (your) "cow chips" not analogous to Victor's "buffalo chips", Barbara — at least, that was how I understood the latter (with the help of Google, of course) …
Daniel Deutsch said,
January 7, 2025 @ 7:02 am
Potato chips are often served with drinks in Italian bars. You have to careful if you request them, however, because “patatine” or “patatine fritte” can mean potato chips or French fries. You may have to say “patatine chips” or use the adjective “sottili.”
Benjamin Ernest Orsatti said,
January 7, 2025 @ 9:35 am
Are Grape Nuts still the only sugar-free cereal commercially available? I love the fact that they've held onto that name, despite the cereal's lack of any connection whatsoever either to grapes or to nuts. But, I guess if they called it something more descriptive — say, "Colon Duster" or "Fiber Chunks"…
Seonachan said,
January 7, 2025 @ 10:13 am
Grape Nuts have no added sugar, but there's maltose in the malted barley. Shredded Wheat has no sugar at all.
Brett said,
January 7, 2025 @ 1:51 pm
@David Marjanović: My mother and brothers preferred Post Toasties to Kellogg's Corn Flakes, because the former were significantly sweeter.
Jonathan Smith said,
January 7, 2025 @ 2:16 pm
Shredded Wheat also has no salt… bizarrely just as hard to come by in a breakfast cereal as no sugar.
Michael Watts said,
January 7, 2025 @ 2:54 pm
I'm intrigued by the notion of a phonemic difference between /dʒ/ and /dj/. In American English, I don't believe such a difference exists.
(We can hear the difference, and produce it accurately on command, but it isn't phonemic.)
There seems to be a suggestion of a syllable break given by the spacing in Philip Taylor's transcriptions, but this can't be relevant or we wouldn't see forms like "gotcha".
Michael Watts said,
January 7, 2025 @ 2:57 pm
Well, you're right that even the notionally unsweetened stuff like Cheerios now advertises a small amount of added sugar.
I don't think Grape Nuts have ever been the only sugar-free cereal; I'm pretty sure Shredded Wheat is currently sugar-free, and I see no reason that would have been different in the past.