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?

Margaret Atwood talked about eating 'eggs chips and peas' as a budget friendly dish in London.

Chips are what the US calls fries, but tend to be thicker cut. Chips and peas are carb and veg accompaniments to all manner of mains like steaks, fried fish or pies.

In this case the protein is eggs, so would be cheaper. As the chips and egg would likely be fried in lard, this is not a vegetarian dish.

Egg and chips would also be another casual meal of the time which is still popular as an easy comfort food.

It reminds me of kids options on menus. EG, Chicken nuggets, fish fingers or sausages.
Served with
chips, pasta or garlic bread.
And
Peas, baked beans, coleslaw.

@MsAmerica which book/s?

Yes it is a stupid question. And now everyone has explained what chips are and what peas are, we can all go on our merry way.

I think the context you might be missing is that it's very normal in UK home cooking to serve a simple boiled vegetable on the side of a meal. Boiled peas are a popular choice because they're quick and cheap. From what I've seen of American home cooking, I think this is less common, which is perhaps why the op is confused

Chips and peas: standard accompaniment to egg, or steak, or fish fingers. Green peas or petit pois.
The chips being the fried potato sort, not American ‘chips’ which are crisps.

If with Chip Shop fish, the chips and peas will be mushy peas. (big marrow fat peas cooked to a thick consistency)

It’s not a standalone dish, like Rice’n’Peas for example.
Or Mac and Cheese.

The peas are an accompanying vegetable, not mixed in with the other food.

Much like if you had burger, fries and salad. The salad is separate.

https://nuush.co.uk/wp-content/uploads/2018/06/Egg-and-chips-recipe.jpg

The egg is shallow fried, in a skillet. The chips are deep fried. The peas are boiled. Eaten with knife and fork.

Re. Peas, think of Peas Pudding, which Laura Ingalls Wilder writes about eating- made with dried peas.
(But Egg, Chips and Peas is surely just egg and chips/fries with some green peas on the side. Egg and Chips very normal cheap family food here a few decades ago.)

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.

Mushy peas aren't a puree though so that would be misleading.

Egg and Chips very normal cheap family food here a few decades ago.)

Or in my case, last week.

It might be a comma issue? We'd have fish, chips, and peas. Or sausage, chips, and peas. Or alternatively, sausage, chips, and beans.

Chips and peas are two different foods to accompany the main protein. It isn't a singular dish 'chips and peas'.

Here you go OP

Well, in what I was reading, they were spoken of together as if it were a dish.

Thanks. I guess the author gets no point for talking clearly about food.

You may be right, and maybe I would that thought that, too, if it weren't that the author (I think it was Margaret Atwood) said it twice.

Well, in what I was reading, they were spoken of together as if it were a dish.

Because that's how someone in the UK would describe them.

I don't see why describing a common dish twice makes it more unlikely than describing it once.

It is as clear as crystal if you are familiar with it, which everyone in the UK would be.

'chips and peas' is a sort of pair of seperate sides that goes together often. As PP said, it's often on kids menus - something like 'burger or nuggets or fish fingers, all served with chips and peas'

Probably because peas, being green, give the deep fried stuff a hint of something healthy and are the most likely to actually be eaten by a picky child. Sometimes it's 'peas or (baked) beans'.

But it's also on adult meals in restaurants too. Peas are sort of the 'default vegetable' that goes with some sort of potato and protein. Sausages, mashed potato and peas. Scampi (fish nuggets, if scampi isn't a thing in America?) chips and peas. Steak, with chips, onion rings, peas and half a grilled tomato. All really common combinations.

Wait - what?
Scampi - which means shrimp - is fish nuggets?

Okay, but are "peas and chips" on a menu TOGETHER at a restaurant?

Not as an item to order in isolation.

It would be 'egg, chips and peas', 'gammon, chips and peas', 'fish, chips and peas'.

These might be listed as:

"Egg
Gammon
Fish

All served with chips and peas."

And scampi is scampi - a big shrimp type thing, shelled, covered in batter/breadcrumbs and deep fried.. The PP who said fish nuggets what guessing what it might be called in the US if you have another name for it.

Not cooked or mixed together. Just served as sides to the same dish, on the same plate.