A product of Parisian culture
And to specify: “In the 1830s in Paris, in the streets, fried potatoes sellers had their product, the package or the fried potato horn, potatoes which they put in their frying. These were cut into sticks in an absolutely certain way from 1840, a few years before they landed in Belgium. In the 1830s, the Parisian popular theater and popular novels evoke the fried potato, which appeared absolutely everywhere. It is a Parisian cultural product with which the Parisian people identify. Then he passed to Belgium through trade. It is a fairground merchant who makes him “take” in Belgium. He goes around all the fairs in Belgium: Ghent, Antwerp, Liège, Mons, Tournai. He calls them “fried potatoes like Paris” before changing their slogan in the 1850s. Over time, every year, in all the cities of Belgium, we look forward to the arrival of the fair to eat fried potatoes. “
Episode 1 of our series “A whole story on our plate”: should we eat like the men of the caves?
According to research by Pierre Leclercq, in the second half of the 19th century, the fried potato therefore belgicated, with in particular the mussels and fries (against the fries steak in Paris). “”Double cooking is also from home. In the 1890s, a first collection of recipes evokes the double cooking of the fried potato, when it is necessary to wait several decades to find it in the collections of French recipes. And then a little before the First World War, we see the fried potato arriving – mayonnaise, because in Belgium, on fat, we like to put fat!“
Summer series: a whole story on our plate (3/5)
Should we be inspired by the food of “cave men”, which stimulated our evolution, to adopt the “Paleo” diet? Why can’t all human beings consume milk and where does this intolerance come from? Are the fries Belgian or French? How did the current company have come to consume ultra-formed products, which could be harmful to health? What does the future have in food in food? These are the questions we are talking about this week in our series “A whole story on our plate”. In the company of a nutritionist and a historian, we explore the great upheavals of the history of our food, whose impacts we are still experimenting with.