The greatest mystery in food: Where do chips come from?

The dish: chips, country of origin unknown

Plate up Here’s the thing about French fries: they’re almost certainly not from France. Because you know what else is not from France? Potatoes. Potatoes are from South America. People have been eating potatoes there for at least 5000 years, maybe longer. So it’s not difficult to accept that the first people to think of slicing potatoes and cooking them in hot fat were probably not French.

But anyway, let’s get the obvious out of the way first: chips are thin strips of potato that are fried in hot oil. That’s it. That’s a chip. These chips are sometimes twice-cooked or even triple-cooked, served with tomato sauce or mayonnaise, plated alongside deep-fried fish or grilled beef or a burger, eaten everywhere from the cheapest takeaway joint to the fanciest restaurant in pretty much every country across the globe. But they’re not French.

First serve

This is subject to conjecture (beef to go with your chips). While the French got the recognition via the name, the Belgians also lay claim to the invention, while it was the Spanish and the British who introduced potatoes to Europe, and it was the South Americans who had cultivated the famous tubers for millennia. So who first fried them in fat? Maybe the Mapuche in Chile: there’s a record of fried potatoes being eaten in 1629. That predates the unconfirmed Belgian story, which is that locals hit on the idea in 1680, as a replacement for unavailable meat.

The humble chip became popular in France, meanwhile, in Parisian bistros in the mid-19th century. Though, potatoes had been consumed in Spain since 1570. The true culinary epiphany, however, took place in Australia in the 1970s, when someone added chicken salt.

Order there

Of course, you should go to Paris for steak frites and Brussels for frieten with mayonnaise or carbonade, though for the true original, perhaps Chile is the spot. Try Papachecos in Santiago (papachecos.cl).

Order here

In Sydney, get your chips at the Yeeros Shop in Marrickville (theyeerosshop.com.au). In Melbourne, head to Northern Soul in St Kilda (northernsoulchipshop.com). In Brisbane, try Sea Fuel (seafuelcleveland.au).

Cook it

How do you make the perfect hot chips at home? Follow Good Food’s guide here.

One more thing

The Americanised name, French fries, is said to have come from Thomas Jefferson, the third president of the United States, who requested “potatoes served in the French manner” at a White House dinner in 1802, though the term “French fried potatoes” wasn’t published until 1856.