What are "chips and peas"?

[MsAmerica]

Sorry if this is a stupid question, but I just ran across it twice in Margaret Atwood, and I've never heard it before. Is it just cubed potatoes and peas stir-fried together, or what?

In my house, McCain oven chips and frozen peas / petit pois - the potato and veg elements of a meal.

I'd have assumed chips and mushy peas from the fish & chip shop. That was my Friday night treat when I was a student and couldn't afford the fish to go with it!

It’s potatoes fries and whichever peas you want. Mushy peas is always a winner with chips.

It's chips and peas. On a plate with whatever main protein item you're having. Chips served with peas

I could eat some chips and peas right now.

M.A. is Canadian, it might not be UK chips.

And UK chips are not "cubed potatoes".

https://commons.m.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Chips_and_mushy_peas.jpg

Chips are raw potatoes, peeled, cut into long rectangular shapes, rinsed and dried and then deep fried in either oil like canola or beef dripping or a combination of both.

McDonalds in the UK uses some beef fat in their oil for their fries as far as I'm aware.
Fries often have a coating added before frying.

Mushy peas are dried peas soaked overnight with bicarbonate of soda, then drained, fresh water added and brought to the boil and cooked until mushy.

Peas, garden peas and petits pois are peas from the pod cooked for a short time in boiling water.

McDonald’s fries are vegan in the UK. No beef flavouring or fat is added. They use a mixture of sunflower oil and rapeseed oils.

I don’t think it’s chips and mushy peas like we have from the chip shop. Margaret Atwood is Canadian and I think she lives in the US.

Agree that chips are usually called French fries or fries in North America.

The thread has made me think of a favourite children's book, Chicken, Chios and Peas by Alan Ahlberg

I think that it’s literally chips and peas as she mentions them(with egg) in this interview about her visits to London.

”I always end up going to Boots and Accessorise on my first day to pick up all the things I’ve forgotten to pack. Pret A Manger sandwiches are such a wonderful addition since I first came to London in 1964, when all you could eat in that price range was eggs, chips and peas.”

https://www.standard.co.uk/lifestyle/margaret-atwoods-my-london-8800429.html

Having lived on both sides of the pond, I've discovered that a lot of transatlantic books (in both directions) are "edited" to make the less understandable/equivalent terms correct for the country where the book is being sold. For example, in the US, in Harry Potter and the Sorceror's Stone, just in chapter 1 you can see that Uncle Vernon pulls into a "parking lot" but Americans think they're reading full on British English because of other terminology/sentence structure/names etc in the book.

For this reason, I suspect a copyeditor has Anglicised the book to say "chips and peas" as we'd understand them in British English editions of the book and probably it says "fries and peas" in US/CA English editions.

I was amazed when reading Stephen Fry's The Hippopotamus Pool in America and it had been Americanised by a copyeditor for the US release.

Re Anglicising books, we have lived in the US and I noticed that Julia Donaldson's The Smartest Giant in Town was The Spiffiest ...

Chips are kind of like steak fries, but not wedge shapes, just similarly chunky and fluffy in the middle. Deep fried / shop bought ones to cook at home are bought part fried and can be done in the oven.

Peas are just shelled peas, boiled in water / steamed / microwaved and maybe with a little bit of butter melted on them.

It's something people do for a really quick dinner - frozen chips in the oven, frozen peas in the microwave, maybe with chicken nuggets or ham and a fried egg.

I’m just going to leave this here

Here it woukd be chips (as in from a chip shop) and mushy peas, preferably with lots of salt and vinegar and sone white bread and butter

Chips and mushy peas from the chippy?

Even if Anglicised, speaking as someone from North America, fries and peas is an even weirder combination in that context than chips and peas in a British context. It’s just not a combination that most Canadians would eat. It would be like having chips and boiled cauliflower. Like edible, but not expected. What is the context in the story?

Thank you. This was one of the few useful answers. But I'm still confused. Are they eaten together? I know what "chips" are, of course. What puzzled me was whether it was also peas deep fried and mixed in. Also, the way you describe them, chips are eaten by hand, but mushy peas presumably not. Maybe I misinterpreted what I was reading in thinking they were one dish.
As an American, I can't imagine wanting mushy anything, as that would seem to date back 70-80 years to when everything was overcooked. On the other hand if one called it a "puree," maybe it would sound better.
Thanks, all.

Chips in the US and often Canada are crisps in the UK. So maybe she means crisps and peas? [\helpful]

Why would they be cooked together? Chips are cooked in the oven or deep-fried. Peas are heated up on the stove/hob or in the microwave. It's just chips and peas. It's not a dish.

Have a look at the first image on this page,
https://www.thompsonsfishrestaurants.com/
It shows what fish chips and mushy peas look like in a restaurant today, the chips and battered fish are deep fried, drained, then placed on the plate and the mushy peas are cooked in a pan on a hob and are served in a small round dish which is placed on the plate seperately.

Some chippies even today use animal fat in the oil, so vegetarians like me need to enquire before ordering.

Traditionally, say late 1940s, fish and chips and mushy peas were one of the first takeaway meals. In those days, very few people had a car and meals were not delivered. Among the shops on the high street, there'd be the fish and chip shop, often called the chippy. They were mainly family run, they were equipped with deep fat fryers for the fish and chips, the mushy peas were cooked in a large pan on an adjacent hob.
For many families, fish and chips and mushy peas, often called a a fish supper, was a weekly treat mostly on a Friday night.
It was traditional not to eat meat on a Friday.

The whole takeaway process in those days was geared around getting the food home whilst keeping it warm and not mixing the contents.
Traditionally, the fish was placed in a greaseproof paper bag, That was laid on more greaseproof paper and the chips were added, and lastly the mushy peas in a paper or card cup with a lid. This was then wrapped ip in lots of layers of newspaper and either carried home by hand which risked oil spill and ink stains on clothing, or placed in a customers bag.
It was commonplace to see hungry people open the packages and eat the contents with a small wooden spatula/fork, dipping the chips into the mushy peas.

Very few chip shops in those days had tables, they were initially a takeaway business. Some owners then realised the profits to be made from customers also eating on the premises and chippies started to provide tables and added extra items to their menus to increase trade.

Thanks for asking about mushy peas, it's brought back a lot of memories from childhood.

"McDonalds in the UK uses some beef fat in their oil for their fries as far as I'm aware."

No it doesn't. McDonalds chips are suitable for vegetarians/ vegans.

I love all the people explaining what chips are and what peas are.

Isn’t the question, is this a dish that people eat somewhere in the world as a normal meal or is it a mis-translation or is it a cultural difference. Like chips means crisps in some countries.

@MsAmerica is the context that someone is poor so they can’t afford the protein you’d usually have with chips and peas , such as chicken or gammon?