Mike Devlin Shares A Tale of Two Snacks: When Crisps Met Chips and All Sense Was Lost

After the very confusing jaunt I took discovering what exactly a sandwich is, I reckoned that taking on the task of the crisp/chip debate (that, to be honest, really isn’t a debate) would be a walk in the park.

It wasn’t. It really, really wasn’t. As such, it is now a debate.

Without further ado, let’s take a leaf out of the Iron Maiden playlist and ask: Can I Play With Madness?

We need to begin with a certain Mr George Crum, an African American in Saratoga Springs, New York, working in the Moon Lake House kitchen in 1853 (give or take a week or two). As the story goes, a customer kept sending the potato slices back for being too thick. In a moment of frustration, George sliced them stupidly thin, only to discover the customer loved them—Saratoga Chips, as they then became known. The thing is, his sister Catherine Wicks probably (almost definitely) invented them, but it was George who got all the credit—men, huh?

Irrespective, very thin potato slices were already a thing and existed in cookbooks as early as 1817, but when opening his own restaurant (Crum’s House) in 1860 in New York, he sold them in a basket. So he gets the credit—women treated so badly that 1850s American society would rather give a black man the credit than a woman.

However, they eventually crossed the pond, but because chips—as in thick fried potato sticks—were already a thing, the name had to change to avoid confusion. This makes sense, but keep this in mind for later when we visit a country that cares not for your confusion.

The (UK) chip had not yet found its way in the other direction, but French fries (which we know aren’t French) had done so as early as 1802 at the White House, courtesy of a French-trained slave who was a chef there, and the first written record was in 1862. The famous British chip was eventually popularised in the States by Arthur Treacher’s Fish & Chips in the 1960s.

We are digressing a tad, but at least you are now up to speed—I think.

So far, so good. Crisps on the west of the Atlantic, and crisps on the east. But not all of the east, because Kartoffelchips is how the Germans refer to them, and the French—who we know are sticklers for all things food—call them chips (“sheeps”), or more formally, chips de pommes de terre, and the Spanish call them patatas chips or patatas de bolsa (potatoes in a bag). So I guess it’s just the British who have stuck with crisps? Well, no, because the Irish do, as does South Africa. Oh, and the USA.

Wait, what?

Y’see, when deep-frying other thinly sliced vegetables became a thing, instead of referring to them as chips, the Americans called them crisps. Yes, makes complete sense to me as well. But then, in 1968, Procter & Gamble introduced Pringles, after Fredric J. Baur had created them in 1956, then Alexander Liepa perfected them in the mid-60s, followed by Gene Wolfe, who created the machine to manufacture them.

They were potato-based, and as such were called crisps. Why? Because Pringles are actually made from a potato dough and not an actual potato. In fact, there’s only around 42% potato—admittedly, potato makes up the highest proportion of ingredients—but they were declared not a chip. Important things like this are important, and it’s good that we throw our collective weight behind clarification such as this to put the world to rights.

All of this is well and good—there’s some weirdness here and there, granted—but we get the gist. “G’day, mate,” says Australia cheerfully. Oh dear...

Now, Down Under does have chips and crisps, and you’re correct in your assumption as to which is which. Only thing is, you’re wrong. Helpfully, we have hot chips so that nobody gets confused, but (BUT) when they are cold, thinly sliced, and fried, they are called both crisps and chips interchangeably. This is why hot chips is a thing—so that you don’t get what you weren’t asking for. Oh, those funny Australians...

So embedded are crisps in the UK that Lay’s are known as Walkers. This is because the latter had been a thing since just after WWII and was manufactured in the city of Leicester. In 1989, PepsiCo, which owns Lay’s, bought them out, but knew that the British would riot if Walkers disappeared, so the name (and the word crisps) remained despite an identical font and layout.

Today, crisps/chips come in a veritable smorgasbord of varieties, some unique to specific countries, as any seasoned traveller will tell you. But the UK laughs in the face of these varieties (salted egg? Must try harder, Asia!), for they have—and this is true—brought forth nationwide delicacies such as Hedgehog and Cajun Squirrel. No, seriously.

As it turns out, the crisp/chip thing is not as convoluted as the sandwich (apropos of nothing, but a crisp sandwich is a legitimate dish in the UK), and I guess that’s where it is and will forever be.

Now, if somebody could hand me that bag of UK corn chips... wait, did I not mention that discrepancy?