If you lot're a fan of McDonald's crisp, gold french chips, you lot've likely wondered if something inverse about the season of those famous fries over the years — residue assured, you're not alone in your suspicions. Over the decades, the fast-food giant has changed the oil used to cook those signature chips, oftentimes in response to public pressure level for a "healthier" french fry, resulting in a product that many swear doesn't taste quite as good as it once did (non that nosotros've stopped eating them, mind you). To understand what changed, nosotros decided to explore why McDonald'southward french fries used to taste a lot better.
A Franchise Founded on Chips
To better understand how McDonald'south chips changed over the years, we have to go back to the early gold years of the Golden Arches. Every bit much every bit a burger may come to mind when you think of McDonald'south, it was really the restaurant's french fries that were the main attraction from the beginning. At their bulldoze-in hamburger stand up in San Bernardino, California, brothers Dick and Mac McDonald drew large crowds for fries, burgers, and shakes with cheap prices and quick service, showtime in 1940.
Information technology was the restaurant's fries, in particular, that caught the attention of Ray Kroc, who would become on to bring the McDonald's franchise to the earth. "The McDonald'south french fry was in an entirely different league," Kroc explains in his memoir, "Grinding It Out: The Making of McDonald'due south." "They lavished attention on it. I didn't know it then, but one day I would, besides. The french fry would become nearly sacrosanct for me, its preparation a ritual to be followed religiously."
Taking Time to Make Fries
Two major factors fabricated those original french fries irresistible: texture and tallow. Kroc realized quickly that what helped continue McDonald's chips from getting mushy after the frying process was maintaining the correct amount of moisture and starch in the fries. Fifty-fifty the reliable Russet Burbank potato — the large, oblong variety that McDonald's uses to this day amid others — can vary in moisture content depending on where and how it's grown. To maintain consistency, Kroc had suppliers apply hydrometers to ensure optimal moisture content.
Kroc also found that curing the potatoes — storing them in warm temperatures for a few weeks — helped convert the sugars in a fresh potato into starch, which made for a crisper fry that didn't caramelize and dark-brown. He likewise hired an electric engineer named Louis Martino to develop a "potato computer" to determine the optimal cooking fourth dimension for the fries.
Just it was the beef tallow used to cook the chips that ultimately made them a worldwide hit.
The Flavour Secrets of Formula 47
Photograph credit: canyonos/istockphoto
It was beef tallow — the rendered form of beef fat that'south solid at room temperature — that gave McDonald's chips their signature rich and buttery season. But the tallow was used initially considering it was the cheap, convenient pick. Interstate, the fry oil supplier for the McDonald brothers' burger stand, was also pocket-size of an operation to beget the expensive hydrogenation equipment to produce partially hydrogenated vegetable oil — the most popular frying oil at the fourth dimension. Instead, Interstate provided McDonald's with a blend of seven% vegetable oil and 93% beef tallow, sourced from the stockyards of Chicago, which could extend the life of the oil without expensive equipment. Information technology as well happened to brand the chips incredibly delicious.
The special beefiness tallow and oil blend for McDonald's fries became known as Formula 47, named after the combined toll of the eating place'south "All-American meal" at the time, which included a xv-cent burger, 12-cent fries, and a xx-cent milk shake. Kroc insisted that all of the McDonald's franchises utilise Formula 47, ensuring that the residuum of the land — and somewhen the world — would come to love the taste of McDonald's french fries.
In his memoir, Kroc explains how important those chips were to the success of McDonald'south, "Ane of my suppliers told me 'Ray, you lot know you aren't in the hamburger business at all. You're in the french-fry concern. I don't know how the livin' hell you do it, simply you've got the best french fries in town, and that'south what's selling folks on your identify.'" He goes on to say, "The quality of our french chips was a large part of McDonald's success."
A Modify of Heart
The buttery, beef tallow flavor would keep to be a hallmark of McDonald's fries for decades, adored by the millions — and later billions — served. Merely eventually, concerns were raised that the saturated fatty in beef tallow raises cholesterol levels to potentially unsafe heights, which somewhen prompted a change in the recipe. In 1966, self-made millionaire Phil Sokolof had a nearly life-ending heart set on at age 43, prompting him to create the National Heart Savers Association to campaign against fat and cholesterol in the American diet. A cocky-admitted "student in the greasy hamburger school of diet" before his heart attack, Sokolof went on to launch a multimillion-dollar entrada, including full-page newspaper ads, contending that McDonald's and other fast-food bondage were threatening lives with high-cholesterol menus.
In 1990, faced with Sokolof's campaign and growing public concerns nearly health, McDonald's gave in. Beef tallow was eliminated from the famous french fry formula and replaced with 100% vegetable oil. The results were french fries with nada cholesterol and 45% less fatty per serving than before, but besides a plummet in stock prices and countless consumers saddened by a drop in flavor.
Trying to Bring Back the Flavour
In an effort to bring back some of the flavor lost by removing beefiness tallow, McDonald's began calculation "beefiness flavoring" to its fries. But the company was forced to settle lawsuits from vegetarians and Hindus who abstain from eating beefiness for not disclosing the added ingredient. The visitor now lists "natural beef flavor," of which the starting ingredients are hydrolyzed wheat and milk proteins idea to be a source of "meaty-tasting" amino acids. Many customers idea the changes lost much of the fries' residuum betwixt a crisp, crunchy exterior and a soft interior.
Photo credit: Christopher Jue/Stringer/Getty ImagesOil Change
To make matters worse, the new oil blend began raising health concerns of its ain as people became enlightened of the risks posed by trans fats in hydrogenated vegetable oil. So in 2002 the company inverse the formula again to a new soy-corn oil, designed to cut the amount of trans fats by half while increasing the corporeality of healthy polyunsaturated fats. In 2007, McDonald's announced yet another new oil blend for its fries, this time a healthier trans-fat-complimentary oil — in part a response to New York City's ban on trans fats.
And so while the McDonald'due south french fry may be healthier than information technology was decades ago, nosotros may have sacrificed a lot of taste forth the way.
Of course, many of us still enjoy McDonald's french fries, peradventure just non as much as we used to. The fries still accept that gilt, crispy outside and tender interior. They still offer that delicious sweet-salty philharmonic, thanks to a spray of dextrose after they've been blanched during processing, and the salt sprinkled on after frying.
And for those wondering if nosotros retrieve the original version of McDonald'due south chips as improve tasting only because of nostalgia, author Malcolm Gladwell dispels that idea in his "Revisionist History" podcast episode, "McDonald'due south Broke My Centre." In the podcast, Gladwell laments the end of beef tallow utilize in 1990. He even goes so far as to have the land's leading nutrient scientists recreate the original recipe for a taste test confronting the mod ones. Information technology's no competition, the original recipe wins, and Gladwell concludes, "My heart is total of sadness once again to think about how many millions and millions and millions of people effectually the world have never tasted that."
If you'd like to practice a gustation test yourself, you may want to try making a batch of chips with the original beef tallow recipe.
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Photograph credit: canyonos/istockphoto
Photo credit: Christopher Jue/Stringer/Getty Images
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