this post was submitted on 29 Sep 2023
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Memes

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[–] [email protected] 68 points 2 years ago (1 children)

French is actually the language of the fries.

[–] [email protected] 18 points 2 years ago (2 children)

Curious, so why is it I never heard them talk in French?

[–] [email protected] 40 points 2 years ago (2 children)
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[–] [email protected] 8 points 2 years ago (2 children)

Well, have you given them any reason to want to talk to you? Or are you just murdering them all slowly with your mastication?

See, if you just sat there and killed a large stack of my friends and countrymen, I wouldn't want to talk to you either.

I'm not telling you anything you murderer!

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[–] [email protected] 66 points 2 years ago* (last edited 2 years ago) (3 children)

2003 Americans: "Freedom made this"

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[–] [email protected] 56 points 2 years ago (1 children)

The term "frenching" is also a culinary term that means preparing food for even cooking and to make it visually appealing.

[–] [email protected] 18 points 2 years ago (1 children)

Man, we did that in middle school too

[–] [email protected] 15 points 2 years ago (1 children)

Even though we werent visually appealing...

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[–] [email protected] 48 points 2 years ago (1 children)

Isn't it short for french-cut fried potatoes and had nothing to do with France at all?

[–] [email protected] 13 points 2 years ago (1 children)

Well, France developed the cut. No?

[–] [email protected] 10 points 2 years ago

Eh, they just liked it a lot. But they definitely popularized it and detailed usages of it in books. They didn't invent "cut it long and thin" though, since that's just basic knife work whose origin is lost to time.

[–] [email protected] 44 points 2 years ago (6 children)

Potatoes are a food native to the Americas and the Belgians claiming them is cultural appropriation. French fries are Chilean.

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[–] [email protected] 32 points 2 years ago (1 children)

Fun fact: what's known in the US as "Danish pastries" are known in Denmark as wienerbrød (Vienna bread) and it turns out that both terms have some merit:

It was invented in Copenhagen by immigrants from Vienna

[–] [email protected] 11 points 2 years ago* (last edited 2 years ago) (1 children)
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[–] [email protected] 31 points 2 years ago (4 children)

I was curious about French Toast the other day. Turns out it was invented by someone with the last name French and the intention was to call it French's Toast. But when he printed the name, he forgot the apostrophe and 'S'!

[–] [email protected] 17 points 2 years ago (1 children)

Similar story with German chocolate cake. It was German's chocolate cake. A guy named German.

[–] [email protected] 13 points 2 years ago

And Black Forest cake was actually created by Forest Whitaker.

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[–] [email protected] 27 points 2 years ago (15 children)

Who wants to claim our Brussels Sprouts? Go ahead, take them. Nobody? Well well well.

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[–] [email protected] 26 points 2 years ago* (last edited 2 years ago) (3 children)

In Poland we have Greek style fish, Ukrainian borscht and Russian pierogi. None of which have anything to do with the place they are named after.

I forgot about French pastry. Which I just puff pastry, but we call it French pastry for some reason. Doesn't it come from Ireland?

[–] [email protected] 8 points 2 years ago

A little correction, the name "ruskie pierogi" comes not from Russia but from Red Ruthenia/Red Rus, or Ruś Czerwona in Polish, a region in western Ukraine.

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[–] [email protected] 22 points 2 years ago (2 children)

But... alliteration is always awesome.

[–] [email protected] 15 points 2 years ago (1 children)

We could have called them Flemish fries.

[–] [email protected] 14 points 2 years ago (1 children)

Even as a homophone, I don't want the word phlegm associated with my salty snacks.

Don't call me homophonobic though, I support phonemes of all stars, stripes, and identities.

[–] [email protected] 11 points 2 years ago (4 children)

What about Flanders fries then?

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[–] [email protected] 8 points 2 years ago

Alternatively, alliteration am always awesome

[–] [email protected] 21 points 2 years ago (11 children)

Hot dogs are bastardized from three separate Germanic names. Frankfurt sausages sounded a bit formal, so you got "hot dachshunds," except Americans could neither spell nor pronounce the name of that breed, so you get "hot dogs." If you asked what a hot dog was you'd probably be told it's a wiener on a bun, where the English word "wiener" is a loanword from the German conjugation of "from Vienna." And we've come full circle by routinely referring to dachshunds as wiener dogs.

The less-fun tangent about the prominence of German food in American culture is that New York was famed for its wealthy German-American families until all their wives and children were on a boat that sank. I am not joking.

[–] [email protected] 10 points 2 years ago (3 children)

Quick note, just to be a pedantic arsehole: conjugation is specific to verbs. The general term is declension, which includes conjugation, but more broadly refers to the changing of a word depending on its semantical context

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[–] [email protected] 8 points 2 years ago (1 children)

Survivors reported that the life preservers were useless and fell apart in their hands, while desperate mothers placed life jackets on their children and tossed them into the water, only to watch in horror as their children sank instead of floating. Most of those on board were women and children who, like most Americans of the time, could not swim; victims found that their heavy wool clothing absorbed water and weighed them down in the river.[9]: 108–113 

t was discovered that Nonpareil Cork Works, supplier of cork materials to manufacturers of life preservers, placed 8 oz (230 g) iron bars inside the cork materials to meet minimum content requirements (6 lb (2.7 kg) of "good cork") at the time. Nonpareil's deception was revealed by David Kahnweiler's Sons, who inspected a shipment of 300 cork blocks.[5]: 71–72  Many of the life preservers had been filled with cheap and less effective granulated cork and brought up to proper weight by the inclusion of the iron weights. Canvas covers, rotted with age, split and scattered the powdered cork. Managers of the company (Nonpareil Cork Works) were indicted but not convicted. The life preservers on the Slocum had been manufactured in 1891 and had hung above the deck, unprotected from the elements, for 13 years.[9]: 118–119 

What a disaster, fuck

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[–] [email protected] 17 points 2 years ago (3 children)

It has been established that the earliest recorded recipes of fries are French.

[–] [email protected] 25 points 2 years ago* (last edited 2 years ago) (5 children)

Which is debated as there are signs that point towards Spain having done it first. Then there's the fact that Belgium says they developed it first, not the French, and that remains hotly debated.

It's almost like people aren't entirely sure where French fries came from yet north America insists on calling them French anyway. Wonder if a meme can be made from that?

[–] [email protected] 12 points 2 years ago (1 children)

Without knowing anything at all about the subject, except for where potatoes come from: Can we even be sure that native Americans didn't do them first?

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[–] [email protected] 11 points 2 years ago

I always thought they were called French fries because they're French style, as in cut into long thing pieces. Til!

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[–] [email protected] 11 points 2 years ago (1 children)

Belgians: And I took that personally…

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[–] [email protected] 8 points 2 years ago (1 children)

It doesn't matter, Belgians are making much better fries than French. They deserve the recognition.

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[–] [email protected] 10 points 2 years ago (1 children)
[–] [email protected] 27 points 2 years ago* (last edited 2 years ago) (2 children)

That's the Belgian flag. But don't worry, they are so rare and tiny, that it doesn't make a difference. We eat more Pommes in Germany anyway!

[–] [email protected] 19 points 2 years ago (2 children)
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[–] Nioxic 8 points 2 years ago (2 children)

We call them pommes frites in Denmark

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[–] [email protected] 8 points 2 years ago

Oh hey, OpenDyslexic font.

[–] [email protected] 7 points 2 years ago (16 children)

Then the French play the Uno reverse card and invent "Le sandwich américain"

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