The History of the Potato Chips

Popularna przekąska w postaci cienkich plastrów ziemniaków obsmażonych w głębokim, gorącym tłuszczu znana jest jako chips w amerykańskiej, australijskiej i kanadyjskiej odmianie angielskiego, podobnie jak w większości języków europejskich. W Wielkiej Brytanii i Irlandii nazywa się ją crisps.

Chipsy ziemniaczane wywodzą się z Nowej Anglii jako odmiana frytek i nie są wynikiem inwencji kulinarnej, ale powstały w przypływie złości. Oto historia ulubionej przekąski Amerykanów.
In the summer of 1853, American Indian George Crum was employed as a chef at an elegant resort in Saratoga Springs, New York. On Moon Lake Lodge's restaurant menu were French-fried potatoes, prepared by Crum in the standard, thick-cut French style that was popularized in France in the 1700s and enjoyed by Thomas Jefferson as ambassador to that country. Ever since Jefferson brought the recipe to America and served French fries to guests at Monticello, the dish was popular and serious dinner fare.
At Moon Lake Lodge, one dinner guest found chef Crum's French fries too thick for his liking and rejected the order. Crum cut and fried a thinner batch, but these, too, met with disapproval. Exasperated, Crum decided to rile the guest by producing French fries too thin and crisp to skewer with a fork.
The plan backfired. The guest was ecstatic over the browned, paper-thin potatoes, and other diners requested Crum's potato chips, which began to appear on the menu as Saratoga Chips, a house specialty. Soon they were packaged and sold, first locally, then throughout the New England area. Crum eventually opened his own restaurant, featuring chips. At that time, potatoes were tediously peeled and sliced by hand. It was the invention of the mechanical potato peeler in the 1920s that paved the way for potato chips to soar from a small specialty item to a top-selling snack food.
For several decades after their creation, potato chips were largely a Northern dinner dish. In the 1920s, Herman Lay, a traveling salesman in the South, helped popularize the food from Atlanta to Tennessee. Lay peddled potato chips to Southern grocers out of the trunk of his car, building a business and a name that would become synonymous with the thin, salty snack. Lay's potato chips became the first successfully marketed national brand, and in 1961 Herman Lay, to increase his line of goods, merged his company with Frito, the Dallas-based producer of such snack foods as Fritos Corn Chips.
Źródło: kitchenproject.com
Słowniczek

• resort – kurort
• thick-cut – grubo krojony
• batch – partia
• exasperated – zirytowany, rozdrażniony
• rile – rozdrażnić, rozwścieczyć
• crisp – kruchy
• skewer – nadziać, nabić
• backfire – nie wypalić, przynieść odwrotny skutek
• ecstatic (over/about sth) – zachwycony
• feature – tu: oferować (dosł. prezentować, umieszczać, uwydatniać)
• tediously peeled – mozolnie obrane
• soar – gwałtowanie wzrastać
• peddle – rozprowadzać, handlować
• grocer – sklepikarz, właściciel sklepu spożywczego
• trunk – bagażnik