For most of the twentieth century, the best fries in America were cooked in beef tallow. Then, in the span of a few years, almost nobody was. The story of how that happened explains a lot about how we eat now.
First, what tallow even is
Tallow is rendered beef fat. You cook the fat down low and slow, strain out the solids, and what you are left with is a clean, shelf-stable cooking fat that is firm at room temperature. People have cooked in it for centuries, for good reason: it holds up to high heat, it lasts, and it tastes like something.
The great switch
Up until 1990, McDonald's, and most of the industry alongside it, fried their fries in a beef-tallow blend. That is a big part of why old-timers swear the fries used to taste better. Then came a very public campaign against saturated fat, and under the pressure the chains switched their fryers over to vegetable oil. The rest of the industry followed fast.
The new oils were cheaper, lasted longer in the fryer, and kept the companies out of the headlines. From a spreadsheet's point of view, it was an easy call.
What got lost
Flavor, mostly. Tallow gives a fry a savory, almost roasted depth and a particular crisp that neutral vegetable oils just do not produce. Plenty of people who remember the old fries will tell you they were never quite the same again, and they are not imagining it. The fat you fry in is an ingredient, not just a cooking medium.
Why it keeps coming back
Lately, more cooks and a handful of restaurants have been going back to traditional animal fats, tallow included, mostly because of how they taste and a renewed interest in cooking the old way. Whatever your take on the nutrition debate, the flavor argument was never really in question.
Tallow was never a gimmick. It is simply what fries were cooked in before someone decided that cheaper and better were the same thing.
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