Who Invented French Fries?

From fast food to fancy restaurants, no side dish is as ubiquitous as French fries. The crispy, deep-fried potato sticks have become a fixture of American cuisine and popular culture, as closely associated with Americana as hamburgers and hot dogs.

But despite their popularity in the United States, French fries didn’t originate there. Exactly where they were created is surprisingly complicated. Here’s how French fries became an American staple and what some popular myths get wrong.

Even though their name suggests they originated in France, a widely repeated claim since the 1980s is that French fries were invented in Belgium. One story is that 17th-century Belgian peasants, who lived along the banks of the Meuse River, "cut potatoes into the shape of small fish when the river froze and they could no longer fish,” says Pierre Leclercq, a food historian and the author of History of the French Fry.

But this narrative only began circulating widely in the 1980s. That information came from “a fundamental misinterpretation” of a 1781 manuscript, Leclercq says. He cites historian Fernand Pirotte, who found that potatoes were likely not introduced to the region until around 1735. Leclercq also notes that the fat needed for frying was a luxury and would have been unlikely to be readily available to peasants.

Similar fried potato dishes might have also existed in Spain, which was among the first European countries to encounter the potato after Spanish explorers brought the crop from South America to Europe in the 16th century.

In the early 1990s, another myth spread when some authors claimed that American soldiers stationed in Belgium during World War I coined the term “French fries,” Leclercq explains. According to this story, the soldiers heard French spoken, mistakenly assumed they were in France and brought the name home with them.

“The modern French fry—the potato stick deep-fried in a bath of fat that we know today—was born on the streets of Paris in the early 19th century,” Leclercq says. “From the very beginning, it was much more than a recipe. It was a commercial product, a cultural phenomenon and eventually a marker of popular identity.”

Street vendors sold paper cones of fried potatoes in some of the busiest parts of Paris, possibly as early as the 1790s and no later than the 1820s. “French fries became omnipresent in Parisian popular culture during the 1830s and 1840s,” Leclercq explains. “They quickly became one of the defining foods of the Parisian working classes.” 

However, the belief that French fries were a Belgian invention gradually spread throughout Belgium itself after World War II, Leclercq points out. “By then, Belgium had fully embraced its fry culture in a way unmatched anywhere else in the world, while the once-thriving culture of street fries in Paris had almost completely disappeared," he says.

Thomas Jefferson is often credited with introducing the French fry to America after tasting them during his time in France. The truth is a little more complicated. A recipe for “potatoes served in the French manner” was found in Jefferson’s papers, suggesting that he might have served them at Monticello. However, the recipe called for potatoes to be cut into round slices, not sticks. 

Plus, “there is no evidence” that Jefferson’s potatoes sparked a nationwide craze, Leclercq says. “At the time, fried potatoes remained a relatively exclusive table dish, enjoyed mainly by affluent households,” he adds. “Thomas Jefferson is, at most, a historical anecdote.”

So how did French fries become an American favorite? French-fried potatoes appeared in restaurants and cookbooks from the mid-19th century onward, says Leclercq. They remained primarily a side dish served at the table, not a street food. As they grew in popularity in the late 19th century, they eventually became known as “French fries.”

The real turning point came in the 20th century. French fries became a common accompaniment to steak as restaurants expanded, while frozen fries made large-scale production easier. Then, the rapid growth of fast-food chains after World War II brought fries to an even wider audience. “At that point, French fries ceased to be merely a side dish," says Leclercq, "and became one of the defining symbols of modern American cuisine.”