Chew on This: Everything You Don't Want to Know About Fast Food by Eric Schlosser

Ray Kroc loved French fries. "The French fry [was]. almost sacrosanct for me," Kroc said, "its preparation a ritual to be followed religiously." The success of Richard and Mac McDonald's original hamburger stand had been based as much on the quality of their fries as on the taste of their burgers. The McDonald brothers had come up with an excellent system for making crisp, tasty French fries, one that was later improved by the restaurant chain. Every morning fresh russet Burbank potatoes were washed, skinned, and thinly sliced in the back of the kitchen. McDonald's used special fryers to keep the oil temperature above 325 degrees. As the fast-food chain expanded, it became more difficult-and yet all the more important-to maintain the quality of the fries. Kroc wanted to make sure that the French fries tasted exactly the same at hundreds of different locations. Using fresh potatoes peeled by hand created a risk that the fries might taste better at one McDonald's than another. Kroc couldn't bear that thought.

In 1965, Ray Kroc met with J. R. Simplot, Idaho's great potato baron. Simplot had an idea for McDonald's: switch to frozen French fries. He had good reason to propose such an idea. He was the biggest potato grower and shipper in the United States-and his company had spent years trying to develop the perfect frozen French fry. Simplot wanted Americans to eat more potatoes and hoped that frozen fries would become incredibly popular. Although Thomas Jefferson had brought the Parisian recipe for pommes frites to the United States in 1802, French fries didn't become well known until the 1920s. Americans traditionally ate their potatoes boiled, mashed, or baked. French fries were widely introduced in the United States by World War I veterans who had eaten them in Europe and by the drive-in restaurants that opened in southern California during the 1930s and 1940s. Fries could be served without a fork or a knife, and they were easy to eat behind the wheel. But with all the peeling and slicing and frying, they were extremely timeconsuming to prepare. The frozen fry promised to end all that hassle.