The History of French Fries

The potato that was first introduced, I think in the early 18th century was bitter and nothing like the Idaho baker that baked potato that we might envision at a potato bar. They had to pull off to turn a plant that lived at 8, 10,000 feet in the Andes into a plant that would grow successfully and be palatable in Europe and the United States. That took 100 plus years. It's hard to imagine how someone could resist this, but they didn't have French fries until the 1960s or 1970s.