As McDonald’s prepares to celebrate its 40th anniversary in Luxembourg this summer, few may realise that the global fast-food chain has a Luxembourger to thank for creating one of its most-loved products: chicken nuggets.
René Arend, a native of Wiltz who trained as a chef in Strasbourg, moved to the United States in 1956.
In the land of hamburgers, he worked as a chef for many years at the Whitehall Club in Chicago. His clients include Ray A. Kroc, founder of McDonald’s, and Fred L. Turner, its chairman and chief executive.
Arend initially resisted the idea of joining McDonald’s before relenting. “I’m a chef, I don’t believe in hamburgers”, he said in April 1981, adding: “But when I arrived, I wanted to do for the people on the street what I was doing for the rich.”
I’m a chef, I don’t believe in hamburgers.
René Arend
At first, he tried to develop onion nuggets, but switched to chicken. It took between 14 and 16 months of tests to perfect the product, with the final version developed in 1979.
However, it wasn’t until 1983 that nuggets were officially added to the menu in the United States, due to a shortage of chicken meat. The nuggets became available internationally the following year.
The McRib sauce, another Arend invention, is one of the most popular with McDonald’s fans © Photo credit: Shutterstock
Arend didn’t stop there. He also came up with the McRib, a pork chop sandwich. Less popular than nuggets, it has nevertheless found a following, particularly in the Grand Duchy and Germany.
In the Grand Duchy, McDonald’s began in 1985, with the opening of the first restaurant on Avenue de la Gare on 17 July, just a few metres from the central station.
Today, there are ten McDonald’s across the country. But by the end of this month, this figure will have fallen to nine, with the outlet in the Berchem area to close its doors, following the takeover of the area’s two sites by the Kuwaiti group Q8.
After many years with McDonald’s, Arend stepped down as executive chef in 2004. The Luxembourg native died in 2016, leaving behind one of the world’s most popular recipes.
A recipe inspired by Robert C. Baker’s research
History books may only remember the name René Arend, but the source of inspiration for the Luxembourg chef was Robert C. Baker. It was this American professor who invented the concept of the nugget in the 1960s in his laboratory at Cornell University.
Baker and his student Joseph Marshall created a recipe that enabled nuggets to survive both freezing and frying. Surprisingly, Baker did not patent his recipe for chicken nuggets, instead mailing it to hundreds of companies.
It was this recipe that inspired Arend, who opted for the chicken nugget with its four emblematic shapes: the bell, the bone, the ball and the boot. McDonald’s sniffed out the opportunity and quickly patented Arend’s slightly modified recipe in 1979.
(This article was originally published by Virgule. Translation, editing and adaptation by John Monaghan.)