stosb

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@stosb

wearer of programming socks

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mid 20s | bisexual | programmer | european

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stosb
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Tanuki-Computing
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maypop-the-dragon
@maypop-the-dragon

The Processed Potato Snack Continuum

I don't know about other dialects, but I am aware of a peculiar difference between American and British English: in American English, "chips" are the thin things and the long things are called "fries," whereas in British English, "chips" are the long things and the thin things are called "crisps." To generalize this law into a theory, I propose a Processed Potato Snack Continuum, along which the two dialects are shifted by one unit relative to each other...

Dialect"Fries""Chips""Crisps"
American Englishfriescrisps Unknown A
British English Unknown B friescrisps

Our new theory of Processed Potato Snack Verbiage allows us to ask and investigate some quite fascinating questions. To start, what goes in the Unknown cells of that table? In other words: what would the Americans call a "crisp," and what would the British call a "fry?"

Discuss in the comments if you want to. I'm going to bed. I think hash browns or tater tots might fit into this somehow. Fundamentally, this is a question of what change to the food moving in a direction on the Continuum represents.

P.S. I'm happy to see that #196 is alive and shambling!
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in reply to @maypop-the-dragon's post:

toothandshore
@toothandshore

this reminds me of how i originally thought the hot chips of "eat hot chip and lie" meant like, a nice tray of hot long chips from the chippy, and was devastated to learn it probably actually refers to a flamin' hot dorito

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ann-arcana
@ann-arcana

The annoyingly technical answer for Americans is: Pringles.

While colloquially most people would refer to Pringles as just chips, due to push back from other chip mfg'ers and the FDA, they are officially referred to as "potato crisps", because they are actually made from pressed potato starch instead of whole slices of potato.

This in turn got them briefly in trouble in the UK, because they also didn't qualify for the UK definition of "crisps" for purposes of VAT, but this appears to have blown over.

As to the UK: I have heard some UK speakers in the food world of late start referring specifically to the narrower sort of fried potato you might get with a burger as "fries" or "french fries" after the American parlance, while chips would be your standard chip shop thick bois.

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mathsbian
@mathsbian

I was coming to the comments to say maybe American crisps could be those potato sticks some people put in salads (and that my mom puts inside butterscotch to make a treat she calls haystacks). I can accept Pringles as an alternative.

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mathsbian
@mathsbian

Huh. I only really see French’s when I’m getting french-fried onions for green bean casserole at Thanksgiving or Christmas, and those are definitely still “french-fried onions” and not like. Onions crisps or anything. Weird that they’d change the label for the potatoes. I wonder if they’re competing with another brand that called theirs potato sticks from the start

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ann-arcana
@ann-arcana

it is odd. Pik-Nik is the other big brand for those, and they call theirs "shoestring potatoes", so I dunno. My hunch based on my attempts to search for info on this stuff is it's just because "French's French fried potatoes" is impossible to google.

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in reply to @ticky's post:

garak
@garak

What about the menagerie of types of french fries? Those things that Americans call waffle fries, in British English are those waffle crisps? Would an Australian call them hot waffle chips, or waffle hot chips?

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ticky
@ticky

in those I’ve mostly seen Australians follow the American term, so they’re probably just “waffle fries” to both us and the brits

I think this mostly comes from the etymology of “fish and chips” being common to both, but less common in the U.S.

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