In an attempt to raise moral and invoke the spirit of the Blitz in these Tube-Strike-Flood-addled times, the National Potato Council of England has declared that the last week as National Chip Week. LSi offers up a brief (and possibly untrue) history of the chip.
Like Stonehenge no one really knows when chips were invented, nor do they know exactly who invented them. It is believed by many that chips originated, like most snack foods, in the East and made their way over to Europe via trade routes established by the Phoenicians.
Despite their popularity in the Near-East the eating of chips did not catch on until the reign of Emperor Constantine in the early fourth century AD. Constantine’s love of chips extended to the naming his son Crispus in honour of his favourite kind of chip, as well as morbidly deep frying his ex-wife alive.
Towards the end of the sixth century a great ethical debate arose over the question of what sauce should accompany chips: ketchup or mayonnaise. Some theologians went as far as proposing a new super condiment known only as “luxuria condimentum”, combining both ketchup and mayonnaise into one ultimate sauce. Sadly this never caught on as people slowly realised that it was in fact a con and nowhere nearly as luxurious as initially believed.
The modern notion of reusing chip oil dates back to the Middle Ages where castles under siege would use the left over chip oil as a highly painful anti-infantry weapon. After the frying of a nice golden brown portion of chips the oil would be tossed over the walls and onto the approaching infantrymen, burning and maiming them in the process.
The debate over what condiment goes best with chips flared up internationally again in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, ultimately resulting in a series of Anglo-Dutch Wars. The wars had their roots in an aristocratic disagreement, over whether brown sauce or mayonnaise should be served at a royal banquet meeting between members of the Dutch Republic and the King of England. The disagreement ended after several years of fighting when both belligerents realised that ketchup was the only true condiment, and they both went back to oppressing the serfs.
The most recent development in the history of the chip comes not from the European heartland of chips, but in fact comes from the Americas. The Freedom Fry is the ultimate product of the great American experiment that began when the Founding Fathers first sat down around a bowl of ‘potatoes served in the French manner’ and discussed ideas of revolution. Uniformly 1776mm in length and literally fried in democracy, Freedom Fries have come to reflect the changing modernity that has begun to grasp the chip-eating world.
Frank Jackman