MealMap #77
Where does this dish come from?
Name reveals in 2 guesses
Potatoes cut into even batons, rinsed or soaked to shed their surface starch, dried thoroughly and deep-fried — ideally in two baths, a gentler first fry to cook them through and a brief, very hot second to crisp the outside. Beef dripping or horse fat were once the fats of choice; vegetable oil is now standard. Served hot and salted, with ketchup, vinegar or mayonnaise, as a side, a snack, or the whole meal. Their birthplace is disputed between two neighbours: one side points to a nineteenth-century capital where they became an emblematic street food; the other to an unproduced family manuscript claiming villagers fried potato strips in place of fish when the rivers froze. Traditionally sold in a paper cone with a spoonful of sauce on top.
- potatoes
- vegetable oil
- beef dripping
- salt
- ketchup
- mayonnaise
- vinegar
1 / 2Photo: Richard Allaway · CC BY 2.0 · Modified