BRUSSELS — To Belgians, a proposed food safety rule smacked of bureaucratic overreach that would threaten a centuries-old craft and tarnish the country’s traditions.

The offense? A plan to regulate frites.

In the streets of Brussels, an array of shacks and stalls make frites, or frieten, much as they have for generations — by frying potato strips, and then frying them again to order. The snack is then placed in paper cones and often topped with a sauce.

But officials in the European Union this month proposed changes to the frites cooking process, including a suggestion that the potatoes first be blanched in hot water to avoid the formation of a chemical compound that has been linked to cancer.

(The officials made another Belgian culinary faux pas, referring in the proposal to “French fries,” not frites.)