French Fried Logic

You can count me as a Frog-hater of the first order. I have not liked them since I lived in Germany a dozen or so years ago. They smell, they are rude, they are overtly obnoxious to all Americans, they intentionally gave bad directions, they didn’t have ice cubes, and overall, the place just sucked. yes, I am generalizing- I did have a few positive experiences in France.

Regardless, there is no point to renaming French Fries and French toast (to freedom fries and freedom toast, respectively) is. Matt Yglesias links to this Joe Conason story pointing out that “French Toast” is actaully an American invention:

[A] gastronomic historian writes: “French toast was not invented in France. In fact, it was invented in Albany, NY. Tavern owner Joseph French is credited with inventing the famous breakfast in 1724. Supposedly, Mr. French didn’t know the proper usage of the possessive apostrophe and, instead of ‘French’s toast’ he put ‘French toast’ on his menu.”

Interesting. More interesting is the France/Belgium debate over the origin of french fries. I had always thought they were french fries because they had been ‘frenched.’