French Fries seem to have gotten their name from "Potatoes, fried in the French Manner," which is how Thomas Jefferson described a new cooking method he brought over to the colonies in the late 1700s. He served this to his guests at Monticello and it became a popular, serious dinner fare.

The Oxford Dictionary of the English Language, normally a wonderful reference to use for the meaning of words and their past, was little help. Under the heading "French Fries" there is nothing but a reference to the word, "Chips," which is what the British call French Fries. The dictionary makes first mention of them in an 1857 quote from Dickens about a plate of potato sticks cooked in oil. Gee, that doesn't help much, does it? There were also numerous references and quotes from magazines to French Fries from the 1950s, but these are meaningless to a historian, other than a possible etymological study.

It is interesting to note that the French Fry was the forefather of potato chip. With reference to "The Interesting History of Ordinary Items," in 1853, American Indian, George Crum, was the chef at Moon Lake Lodge in Sarasota Springs, NY. Some guest started complaining that the fries were too thick, so George made a thinner batch (George Crum, not me! ). Still, it was no good. Crum got fed up and made ultra-thin fries which couldn't be picked up with a fork (which was the custom back then) and would break if one tried to. Ironically, not only did his guest love them, so did everyone else. No one noticed that it was actually a failure from George's continuous experimentation, thus Crum gave in and made them regularly. They were on the lodge's menu as Saratoga chips. Crum opened up his own place and specialised in the fries that went wrong.