From Julia Child to Paul <\/span>Bocuse to James Beard, some of the biggest names in food history are also people who have professed their love for the same french fry\u2014a french fry that, in no exaggerated manner, birthed an empire. A french fry that no one has eaten in more than 30 years.<\/p>\n McDonald\u2019s original french fries were cooked in beef tallow. For that fact, they were bullied out of production by a well-funded, well-intentioned businessman and self-proclaimed health advocate named Phil Sokolof, who unknowingly dethroned what many fans claim was the greatest french fry to ever meet mass production. \u201cThe french fries were very good,\u201d Child said in a\u00a01995 interview<\/a>, \u201cand then the nutritionists got at them \u2026 and they\u2019ve been limp ever since \u2026 I\u2019m always very strong about criticizing them, hoping maybe they\u2019ll change.\u201d<\/p>\n My hunt for the lost McRecipe took me up the corporate ladder and to obsessive corners of Reddit. I spoke to fast-food experts, super-fan museum curators, and a 79-year-old former employee of the very first McDonald\u2019s. After weeks of digging, I procured a recipe for the original fries that one fast-food historian believes to be the real deal, one I recreated several times to ensure its legitimacy. I sweat over hot tallow, bled from cutting perfect shoestrings, and literally got pulverized salt in those wounds. But according to at least one expert, I have reason to believe the recipe I\u2019ve uncovered is authentic.<\/p>\n Before you recreate a masterpiece, it bears knowing from whence it came.<\/p>\n Ben Stacks was an employee <\/span>at Richard and Maurice McDonald\u2019s seminal location in San Bernardino, California, \u201cfrom the summer of \u201954 right up until I got a draft notice in \u201960,\u201d he tells me over the phone. If anything, he knew the original fry too well: On Saturdays alone, he processed 1,000 pounds of them\u2014all of which were sold and eaten that day. \u201cKids I grew up with just lived for McDonald\u2019s to open,\u201d he says, \u201cthey\u2019d ride their bikes over just for the fries.\u201d<\/p>\n To the best of Stacks\u2019s memory, the fries were made as such: Locally sourced Idaho russet potatoes were peeled, chopped, and rinsed of excess starch in a shed behind the restaurant. The prepared shoestrings sat in cold water until an hour before frying, at which point they were drained and dried before being tossed into a hot vat of 100 percent beef fat. \u201cCook \u2019em, salt \u2019em, sell \u2019em,\u201d says Stacks. \u201cThey were wonderful. You could get a good hamburger any place\u2014nothing special about those\u2014but those french fries were really wonderful.\u201d<\/p>\n The fries caught the attention of Ray Kroc, then the company\u2019s milkshake-machine salesman. Stacks says he was working the day Kroc first visited. \u201cHe was curious as to how in the heck we wore out his [milkshake] machines as soon and as often as we did,\u201d says Stacks. With lines around the block, their milkshake machines never got much of a break and the belts often blew out within weeks. \u201cAnd that\u2019s when Kroc had his vision.\u201d<\/p>\n It\u2019s important to note that at the time, few fast-food operations were even attempting fries. According to Adam Chandler, the author of\u00a0Drive Thru Dreams: A Journey Through the Heart of America\u2019s Fast-Food Kingdom,\u00a0<\/em>World War I soldiers returning to the United States from France and Belgium ushered these exotic fried potato strings into the American culinary consciousness.* But Chandler says that fries were too labor intensive and difficult to execute in a consistent, commercial manner. While most burger joints made do with potato chips, \u201cthe McDonald brothers had a secret,\u201d he says. They used their desert setting to their advantage, curing potatoes for several days in the desert air before processing them. \u201cThey had this extra crispness to them that made them better than any fry you\u2019d ever had.\u201d<\/p>\n What few were even attempting, the McDonald brothers were nailing. Kroc wanted in, and he knew if he were to succeed, it would be on the back of those fries. \u201cThe fry would become almost sacrosanct for me,\u201d Kroc later wrote in his\u00a0autobiography<\/a>, \u201cits preparation a ritual to be followed religiously.\u201d By 1955, Kroc bought the franchising rights from the McDonalds brothers and started building what would slowly become his empire.<\/p>\n As McDonald\u2019s branches crept across the nation, Kroc ensured the superlative fries would stay so at scale. As Malcolm Gladwell reported in the\u00a0New Yorker<\/em><\/a>, Kroc armed field men with hydrometers to ensure the potatoes met ideal water content and solidity levels, developed his own potato-curing method that didn\u2019t require a desert, and even hired an engineer from Motorola to design a \u201cpotato computer\u201d that calibrated fry oil temperature to deliver consistently cooked fries. He tinkered with the frying oil as well, developing a secretive, cost-saving mixture of beef tallow and vegetable oil termed \u201cFormula 47\u201d (after the original 47-cent McDonald\u2019s meal).<\/p>\n By the end of the 1960s, there were 1,000 McDonald\u2019s franchises across the\u00a0United States<\/a>. It was the largest fast-food company in the country, and its fries in particular attained iconic status. Albert Okura, fast-food devotee and CEO of the California-based Juan Pollo restaurant chain, worked at Burger King from 1970 to 1978. \u201cAll we did was monitor McDonald\u2019s,\u201d he says, \u201cwe copied everything they did. But nothing came close.\u201d His love of McDonald\u2019s, sparked in his youth, would eventually lead him to found the\u00a0unofficial museum of McDonald\u2019s memorabilia<\/a>\u00a0at the site of the very first McDonald\u2019s in San Bernardino.<\/p>\n One by one, competing brands began cooking their fries in beef tallow as well, hoping to approximate what slowly became the gold standard in french fries, according to Chandler. \u201cMcDonald\u2019s original fries took hold in such a way that when someone said \u2018french fry,\u2019 everyone thought of the same thing,\u201d he says.<\/p>\n In all likelihood, Phil Sokolof himself at one point loved the very fries he would come to destroy.<\/p>\n In 1966, at age 43,\u00a0<\/span>Phil Sokolof suffered a heart attack that nearly killed him. The lithe industrialist\u2014who\u2019d made his riches selling construction supplies\u2014never even smoked, but was, as\u00a0he wrote in 1991,<\/a>\u00a0\u201ca student in the greasy hamburger school of nutrition for [his] first 43 years.\u201d His cholesterol was over 300, comfortably in the danger zone for heart attacks. Lack of self-control aside, it was fatty foods that nearly killed him. Thus, when he emerged from the hospital, he did so on a one-man mission to fight Big Fat.<\/p>\n Between 1966 and 1990, Sokolof spent around $15 million fighting against the use of fatty ingredients in foods across\u00a0the United States<\/a>. He founded the National Heart Savers Association with his own money, pushed Congress to declare April \u201cKnow Your Cholesterol Month,\u201d and took out full-page ads in newspapers smearing major food brands for their ingredients.\u00a0He called himself<\/a>\u00a0\u201cthe little guy from Omaha\u201d;\u00a0papers<\/a>\u00a0called him the \u201cFat Fighter\u201d (though \u201cFat-Fighter\u201d might have been more apt).\u00a0After strong-arming<\/a>\u00a0major players like General Foods, Kellogg\u2019s, and Nabisco into changing their recipes, Sokolof set his sights on the Golden Arches.<\/p>\n \u201cMcDonald\u2019s, Your Hamburgers Have Too Much Fat,\u201d a full-page ad in the spring of 1990 squarely declared in the\u00a0New York Times<\/em>,\u00a0Wall Street Journal<\/em>, and other newspapers under the sensational headline \u201cThe Poisoning of America.\u201d McDonald\u2019s fought back: \u201cThe papers just didn\u2019t check the facts,\u201d McDonald\u2019s attorney Joseph Califano told the\u00a0AP<\/em><\/a>\u00a0in 1990. The ads persisted, with billboards in Times Square and Super Bowl commercial spots. McDonald\u2019s stood their ground. \u201cThe ads are so absurd, they are starting to be tiresome,\u201d spokeswoman Melissa Oakley told\u00a0a reporter<\/a>, adding that legal action was not out of the question.<\/p>\n![\"Ben](\"https:\/\/assets.atlasobscura.com\/article_images\/lg\/79003\/image.jpg\")
![\"Ray](\"https:\/\/assets.atlasobscura.com\/article_images\/lg\/78994\/image.jpg\")
![\"Phil](\"https:\/\/assets.atlasobscura.com\/article_images\/lg\/79002\/image.jpg\")
\n