Was it Santa Teresa de Avila who invented French fries? It is true?

Fu Saint Teresa of Ávila to invent the French fries? Belgians, French and New Yorkers have always quarreled over the invention of this famous and delicious dish but what is the truth?

According to the Belgian Paul Ilegems, professor of art history and founder of the French fries museum Fried Museum, it was almost certainly Santa Teresa d'Ávila who invented the popular fast food.

This is based on a letter dated December 19, 1577 that the Saint sent to the Mother Superior of Carmelite Convent of Seville. In it the Saint said: “I received yours, and with it the potatoes, the pot and seven lemons. Everything went very well ”.

The journalist and food critic Cristino Álvarez believes this theory is unlikely. “He has never tasted this tuber because the potato the Saint talks about is the so-called Malaga potato or sweet potato, a tuber that Columbus had already imported from Haiti on his return from his first trip. While it took half a century to hear about the potato ".

The truth is that there are data, since 1573, in the accounting books of a hospital, which show that the institution had received this tuber, with multiple nutritional and curative properties, from one of the convents of the Carmelitas Descalzas, an order founded by Santa Teresa of Avila.

At the same time, Paul Ilegems gave a second theory. According to him, it was the Belgian fishermen who, accustomed to frying small fish, did the same with the first potatoes, which arrived in 1650.

The French, however, disagree and define themselves as the inventors of the famous "potato chips". It is said that as early as the late 18th century sellers of this delicacy were seen on the Pont Neuf a Paris.

The truth is that the popular name of the fries was actually in French but the Belgians explained that the term became famous during the First World War, when their soldiers, who used French to communicate, offered the fries to American soldiers.

The said thin round fries chips, instead, they were born in 1853 in a New York restaurant. The chef, faced with constant complaints from a customer who scolded him for not cutting the potatoes thin enough, decided to teach him a lesson, cutting them very thin so that they could not be taken with a fork. The result was the opposite of what was expected: the customer was surprised and completely satisfied and soon all the customers started asking about this strange new specialty.

Source: Church Pop.