Everyone loves French fries. It's one of the few things which most people can agree on in the world today.

The average American consumes over 16 pounds of them every year, and they've become a stable part of the cuisine in countries all over the world.

Yet, why do Americans call them

French fries? What do the French have to do with it? Learn more about the history of

this ubiquitous food and learn what the French did or did not have to do with it on this episode of

everything everywhere daily. This episode is brought to you by Audible. If you're interested in the history of what we eat and how it came to be that way,

the book I'd recommend is Consider the Fork, a history of how we cook and eat by B Wilson.

In it, she goes into detail of how the techniques in the kitchen have shaped how and what we eat,

everything from the 20,000-year-old mortar and pestle to the microwave oven.

You can get a free one month trial to Audible and two free audio books by going to

Audible Trial.com slash everything everywhere or by clicking on the link in the show notes. Before we can talk about the French fry, we first have to back up and talk about the

origins of the potato.

The potato originated in South America where the people there have been cultivating it for thousands of years.

It was first brought to Europe by the Spanish in the late 1500s where they found it to grow quite well.

And fun fact, the Monastery Garden in Guadalupe Spain

was the first place outside of the Americas where the potato was grown.

Potatoes were probably brought there

because it was where Queen Isabella was staying.

And I was told this because I took a tour of the Monastery two years ago.

I'm not going to go into too much depth because, believe it or not, the story of the potato is actually really important

and it was responsible for much of the growth of Europe in the 18th and 19th century and I may

dedicate an entire episode to it in the future. The potato wasn't accepted at first. Many people

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