Fish or Chips?

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Seems to be an ongoing thing in these forums Recently..

So what do you prefer The fish? Or the Chips?

Well, being diabetic I have to stay away from the potatoes, so it's the fish for me. If I didn't care about my blood sugar it would have to be BOTH!

Sometimes Americans are such idiots. I ordered fish and chips the other day (substituted salad for the chips), and the waitress had no clue what "malt vinegar" was. Took her and the manager 10 minutes to find a crusty old bottle.

Sometimes Americans are such idiots

Lets try and stay away from rash and general statements. Not all American's are idiots.

Anyway, Fish and Chips is the embodiment of British Culture, along with the pinstripe suit... How... cultural.

well chips as brits call it or frenchfries as some others call it was invented in Belgium ....

What..? You mean it wasn't invented in Yorkshire!???! :shock:

i fink you got the wrong end of the stick jupiter Yorkshire puds came from Yorkshire!

Sounds like a Belgian conspiracy to me.

This can help...?

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For also in the 1840s, pomme frites ("fried potatoes") first appeared in Paris. Sadly, we don't know the name of the ingenious chef who first sliced the potato into long slender pieces and fried them. But they were immediately popular, and were sold on the streets of Paris by push-cart vendors.

Frites spread to America where they were called French fried potatoes. You asked how they got their name--pretty obvious, I'd say: they came from France, and they were fried potatoes, so they were called "French fried potatoes." The name was shortened to "french fries" in the 1930s.

By the way, the verb "to french" in cooking has come to mean to cut in long, slender strips, and some people insist that "french fries" come from that term. However, the French fried potato was known since the middle 1800s, while the OED cites the first use of the verb "to french" around 1895, so it appears pretty convincing that "french fried potatoes" came before the verb "frenching." The origin of the name is thus the country of origin French and not the cooking term french.

In the U.K., fried fish had been on sale by street vendors since the 1600s. In 1864, a brilliant (but, alas, unknown) Brit teamed French fried potatoes (called "chips" in English) with fried fish, to create the famous and popular fish and chips.

Lets try and stay away from rash and general statements. Not all American's are idiots.

I'm American. Well, by birth I'm Cuban, but been here for 35 years and consider myself and American. Sometimes Americans are quite clueless, and I provided the anecdotal evidence. People in other countries can be clueless too, but in general I think we in America are exceptionally clueless on things that aren't American. Like malt vinegar on your fish.

Damn it. Now I'm hungry.

I have to take issue with the use of chips and french fries as synonyms. (Sorry, that sounded a bit snooty).

Proper chips from a chip shop (and how my granny makes them) are much thicker than the stringy french fries you get from the likes of McDonalds or Burger King and do not come pre-covered with a salt/sugar coating. They are chipped potatoes not re-constituted potato matter and therefore taste more "potato-y".

As a matter of personal taste, I have to have salt and vinegar - the proper malt vinegar, not the french stuff made from wine that's gone off - with my chips. If bought from a chippy, they should be eaten from a newspaper, generally a tabloid, and on the way back from a football match.

I'm going to stop now 'cos I'm ranting on and getting very hungry!