page_title: French fries
section_title: France
hierarchical_section_title: French fries / By country or region / France
caption_attribution_description: English: Steak frites in Fontainebleau, France Français&#160;: Steak frites
context_page_description: French fries, or simply fries, chips, finger chips, or French-fried potatoes, are batonnet or allumette-cut deep-fried potatoes.
  French fries are served hot, either soft or crispy, and are generally eaten as part of lunch or dinner or by themselves as a snack, and they commonly appear on the menus of diners, fast food restaurants, pubs, and bars. They are usually salted and, depending on the country, may be served with ketchup, vinegar, mayonnaise, tomato sauce, or other local specialties. Fries can be topped more heavily, as in the dishes of poutine or chili cheese fries. Chips can be made from Sweet potato instead of potatoes. A baked variant, oven chips, uses less oil or no oil.
context_section_description: In France and other French-speaking countries, fried potatoes are formally pommes de terre frites, but more commonly pommes frites, patates frites, or simply frites. The words aiguillettes ("needle-ettes") or allumettes ("matchsticks") are used when the french fries are very small and thin. One enduring origin story holds that french fries were invented by street vendors on the Pont Neuf bridge in Paris in 1789, just before the outbreak of the French Revolution. However, a reference exists in France from 1775 to "a few pieces of fried potato" and to "fried potatoes".
  Eating potatoes for sustenance was promoted in France by Antoine-Augustin Parmentier, but he did not mention fried potatoes in particular. Many Americans attribute the dish to France and offer as evidence a notation by U.S. President Thomas Jefferson: "Pommes de terre frites à cru, en petites tranches" ("Potatoes deep-fried while raw, in small slices") in a manuscript in Thomas Jefferson's hand (circa 1801–1809) and the recipe almost certainly comes from his French chef, Honoré Julien.
  In addition, from 1813 on, recipes for what can be described as "french fries" occur in popular American cookbooks. By the late 1850s, a cookbook was published that used the term French Fried Potatoes.
  The thick-cut fries are called Pommes Pont-Neuf or simply pommes frites (about 10 mm); thinner variants are pommes allumettes (matchstick potatoes; about 7 mm), and pommes paille (potato straws; 3–4 mm). (Roughly 0.4, 0.3 and 0.15 inch respectively.) Pommes gaufrettes are waffle fries. A popular dish in France is steak frites, which is steak accompanied by thin french fries.
caption: Steak frites in Fontainebleau, France
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