How do they know?

[Eadwine Rose]

We Dutch call "potato chips" "chips". French fries are called friet over here.

Funny.. language things heh.

[ChrisUK]

We Dutch call "potato chips" "chips". French fries are called friet over here.

Funny.. language things heh.

I've not travelled, but if I did, I think that I'd need to learn the equivalent of "French Fries" in every language... very important to get the food that you expect on your plate (I've made a start with "friet" if I was to go to Holland)

Language is quite a fascinating subject, much of the English language comes from French (The Normans) and Latin... Years ago when I was learning French (much of which I've now forgotten), it surprised me how many words ending in "tion" (as in "station") were identical in French, because they came from French. We don't pronounce them the same way, but they're the same words.

Oh, and Dutch has given us some words too, like "freight", "brandy", "yacht"... there's more too.

[j2mcgreg]

I think that it's just the potato chip manufacturer's marketing plan. He / she/ they will want to avoid a scenario like ... Oh they taste great but they look disgusting ..., so they take pains to make sure that only top notch ingredients and best practices are used in the initial product runs. Once the new flavour or brand is established, they can afford to lower their standards ( and probably raise their profit margins).

[rokytnji.1]

If you have Alexa , Similiar Web, siri, among others. I am guessing. The shadow will know. Social media Likes to share druthers also. Then there is geo locator on my durn phone telling the world where I am at and maybe what I am doing.

Chili dogs and home made long Idaho potato , French cut fries, smothered in chili and cheese with dos equis long neck beer on the menu tonight. If you no likey. More for me.

[tascoast]

I once worked with crisp (and other) potato breeding and agronomy. Seeing sliced and fried samples laid out from various new crosses (grown from actual seed-microtubers in glasshouse-field trials. On occasions I'd visit a commercial plant to try promising varieties out.

I recall the trucks of fresh spuds arriving, being checked for dry mass particularly (dry/suspended in water weights x basic formula), before joining the commercial line beginning with folk wearing mesh gloves cutting off obvious damage and imperfections before a skinning machine and conveyor delivered them to a centrifugal cutter (like a giant vertical tub with blades). From there they dropped into a covered cooker and rolled out a few meters away, piping hot to touch, to be inspected for blemishes by a couple of employees.

My task was to peel the potato samples I'd been sent with, run a simple apple corer through the middle of the tuber, toddle up to the walkway over the cutter, drop them in, then hurry to the belt where they left the cooker and bag up any holey crisps I could spot, tagging for return to the agronomists to inspect.

Aussies call 'em chips, crisps in the US I understand. Hot chips or fish 'n chips means the traditional chunky ones you'd typically see in the UK.

The specific quality of potatoes is obviously important to transnational buyers. Fries, those thinner, fast food style hot chips, depend on somewhat different characteristics, a spud that is oval but long (a small brick shape would be ideal!), rather than rounder and a bit smaller for crisping.

I don't know why new flavours would present better. If they do, it might represent small batch runs or something like that, with possibly additional eyes on the raw product quality, more staff temporarily available for picking out blemishes, things like that. Most of the process is pretty automated though, assuming the bulk load meets production criteria.

[asqwerth]

Everything is understood here in its proper context.

Potato chips or crisps; fish and chips; chunky cut chips or fries; and in a Belgian restaurant for instance, frites with your mussels. Yum.

[tascoast]

http://www.abc.net.au/news/2016-01-05/w ... ic/7069684

Scallop for potato cake is one local eccentricity, the former prevailing in our national capital. Some people even say fritter, I gather, out in the whoop whoop, beyond the black stump, the back of Bourke, out bush...Soft drink remains the firm Aussie preference for soda pop fizzy stuff, but I think there's a regional variation somewhere for that one too.

Suggested imaginary reading -
Frits and French fries : the Perils of Food Nomenclature During Times of Global Tension.

[anticapitalista]

Quite obviously the companies have placed a chip on you without you knowing.

[ekeimaja]

I think it is just a coincidence. As a regular eater of certain chips brand I can tell that the quality between the bags of same flavour can vary drastically.

[Gaer Boy]

It's the same mechanism that controls my use of the Forum. When I'm checking posts throughout the day, 'Newest Posts' always shows the exact number of topics with unread posts - there are never more or less!