• Poik@pawb.social
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    1 year ago

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

      • ricecake@sh.itjust.works
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        1 year 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.

  • Cleverdawny@lemm.ee
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    1 year ago

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

  • AJam@lemmy.world
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    1 year ago

    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’!

  • VikingHippie@lemmy.wtf
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    1 year ago

    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

    • dankm@lemmy.ca
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      1 year ago

      Brussels sprouts look and taste like little green brains. I have no idea what brain actually tastes like, but I imagine it’s brussels sprouts.

      • zaphod@lemmy.ca
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        1 year ago

        Brussel sprouts are delicious. Modern versions have had their bitterness bred out. Roasted until crispy with olive oil and garlic and salt and they’re fantastic.

        Problem is the fools that boil or steam them. That way lies little green brains.

        • dansity@lemmy.dbzer0.com
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          1 year ago

          They taste like the worst version of a cabagge and they smell god awful while being prepared. I do believe some michelin star chef could make me a version I can eat but it would be a much more involved version not just roasted till crispy.

      • Rinox@feddit.it
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        1 year ago

        Btw, you can cook and taste brain. It’s not the most common thing to find, but you can sometimes find it at a butcher shop, along with the insides of other animals

  • mindbleach@sh.itjust.works
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    1 year ago

    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.

    • TheyCallMeHacked@discuss.tchncs.de
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      1 year ago

      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

    • can@sh.itjust.works
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      1 year ago

      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

        • SnipingNinja@slrpnk.net
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          1 year ago

          That’s what they’re saying I think? First they saw Germany, then they would’ve seen America? Though idk if those people were immigrants or the second generation of immigrants

    • sverit@feddit.de
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      1 year ago

      Well, we have Wiener Würstchen made from pork and beef, and we have Frankfurter Würstchen which are made from pork and are smoked :)

    • Mkengine@feddit.de
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      1 year ago

      I always found it funny that it is called “dachshund” in English. In German it is called “Dackel” and “dachshund” would be translated as “badger dog”. I don’t think that a badger is really meant here, but that the language has just developed a bit strangely (like with the word ampersand).

      • ThunderclapSasquatch@startrek.website
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        1 year ago

        We call them that because they were meant to drive badgers from dens. It’s why they are so inclined to be aggressive little shits when not properly trained

        • Mkengine@feddit.de
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          1 year ago

          Thanks for the explanation, I didn’t know that and wikipedia does not explain that in their etymology section.

          • ThunderclapSasquatch@startrek.website
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            1 year ago

            Always happy to help, it’s not often that my families multiple generations of dog breeding and training actually provides relevant information to internet conversations

    • Stamets@startrek.websiteOP
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      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?

      • somas@kbin.social
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        1 year ago

        @Stamets

        I’ll simplify things for you. I invented french fries. Anyone who says otherwise is a dirty liar

      • Prunebutt@feddit.de
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        1 year ago

        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?

            • MxM111@kbin.social
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              1 year ago

              Apart from the fact that lard fries would be different from French fries (probably better, to be honest), my understanding is they fried food on stones, they did not have metal skillets with high edges (or metal skillets at all). So, fried potatoes, yes. Deep fried, no.

              • dadarobot@lemmy.sdf.org
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                1 year ago

                Your point about the frying not being “deep” is valid, but your insistence that it has to be vegetable oil is just incorrect.

                Since the 1960s, most french fries in the US have been produced from frozen Russet potatoes which have been blanched or at least air-dried industrially.[12][11][13][14] The usual fat for making french fries is vegetable oil. In the past, beef suet was recommended as superior,[7] with vegetable shortening as an alternative. McDonald’s used a mixture of 93% beef tallow and 7% cottonseed oil until 1990, when they changed to vegetable oil with beef flavouring.[15][16] Horse fat was standard in northern France and Belgium until recently,[17] and is recommended by some chefs.[18]

                wikipedia

        • Catoblepas@lemmy.blahaj.zone
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          1 year ago

          Probably not the deep fried version, since AFAIK there isn’t any evidence of pre-Columbian cooking vessels that would be suitable for frying.

      • havocpants@lemm.ee
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        1 year ago

        I love those meatballs they do in Belgian and Dutch frite shops that come in segments like a Terry’s chocolate orange.

  • Dadifer@lemmy.world
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    1 year ago

    I really don’t understand why Belgium is so upset about this. They’re literally fried potatoes. Choose something else.

    • stebo02@sopuli.xyz
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      THEY’RE NOT JUST FRIED POTATOES THEY ARE A CULINARY MASTERPIECE! THEY’RE CRISPY ON THE OUTSIDE, FLUFFY ON THE INSIDE, AND SERVED WITH A DIZZYING ARRAY OF SAUCES AND TOPPINGS THAT ELEVATE THEM TO A WHOLE NEW LEVEL OF DELICIOUSNESS!!

    • kattenluik@feddit.nl
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      I don’t know why you think the entire country of Belgium has anything to do with this and it’s not just a joke to laugh about language in the US.

    • TheyCallMeHacked@discuss.tchncs.de
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      1 year ago

      Especially since they didn’t invent the fried potato. The French did. They invented cutting the potato in sticks instead of disks to fry them…

      • merc@sh.itjust.works
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        1 year ago

        Especially since they didn’t invent the fried potato. The French did.

        Can we really say that with any certainty? Frying is a pretty basic cooking technique, and potatoes became a very common ingredient. Maybe it really caught on in France, but I’m sure just about anybody who was eating potatoes must have tried them fried on occasion.

        • havocpants@lemm.ee
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          1 year ago

          This is “who invented the sandwich” all over again when what we really mean is “who named the sandwich”. We credit the Earl of Sandwich for the invention, but sandwiches have existed for as long as bread has. I mean there are only so many things you can do with bread and slicing it and putting other food in between is beyond obvious.

          Now I’m hungry.

          • SnipingNinja@slrpnk.net
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            1 year ago

            But considering sliced bread is treated as an amazing invention (at least the phrase “best thing since sliced bread” would have you believe that) then maybe whoever invented sliced bread was also responsible for inventing sandwiches.

            As for what people did before sliced bread? I’ve seen people tear pieces from a bread loaf and use it to soak liquids, so I assume that was the method used for all uses of bread.