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White-Potato-art - 8/4/18

"Potatoes (White or Virginian)" by Brigitte Webster.

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This article was added to this set of files, called Stefan's Florilegium, with the permission of the author.

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Thank you,

Mark S. Harris...AKA:..Stefan li Rous

stefan at florilegium.org

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The long journey of the potato from Peru into the cookery pots of Europeans in Early Modern Europe

Potatoes (White or Virginian)

by Brigitte Webste

The ordinary and "beneath notice" white potato was brought back from Peru to Spain in the 1570s by Spanish sailors. However, the Spanish came across the potato much earlier - in 1537 and possibly even 4 years earlier than that, when they first encountered Incas ploughing the fields for potatoes.

A great opportunity was lost when the potato's tremendous wealth and power was missed. Scientists now know, that the potato supplies all vital nutrients including vitamin C – except for calcium and vitamins A & D which can be added to the diet with diary products.

The Spanish waited almost 30 years, before some sailors brought them back to the homeland as a curio. Three years later, the potato was feeding the patients in a Seville hospital. Despite the potato's unique & valuable credentials as a complete diet, its journey to conquer Europe was slow as it was seen as the food for the poor. The potato was rarely mentioned by the New World chroniclers but when they did, the potato was given praise. Only the Jesuit missionary Bernabe Cobo was not convinced and claimed that the Peruvians would eat anything that did not harm them but he liked "the most delicious fritters" that the Spanish colonial women produced with potatoes. Pedro de Cieza de Leon who wrote the Cronicle of Peru in 1553 wrote how people would go hungry without the potato ( chuno ) The potato was sold by Spaniards to the Peruvian slaves working at the silver mines and became very wealthy by doing so. Potatoes lacked the appeal to be exported to Europe because it was the food for the Peruvian ( almost slave like ) workers. Potatoes were exotic but uninspiring and plain - unlike the sweet potato( from the morning glory family ) which returned back to Spain with Columbus straight away after his landfall in Haiti. From 1493 Spanish ships transported the sweet potato back to Europe ( John Gerard is holding this plant in the portrait of 1597 on the front page of his Herbal ).

The Andean ( White / Virginian ) potato ( and not from Virginia as mistakenly believed by many ) had no wealthy advocates, influential patrons or special powers such as being an aphrodisiac.

By 1600 the potato had entered Spain, Italy, Austria, Belgium, Holland, France, Switzerland, England, Germany and most likely Portugal and Ireland. It was strictly a garden crop and unworthy of field cultivation. Almost the only people who grew potatoes were botanists. The Dutch botanist Carolus Clusius was the first to grow them in Europe as well as describing them in his "Raziorum plantorum historia" and English botanist John Gerardwho grew an example given by the Dutch botanist, in his garden which he illustrated and described in 1597as part of his "Herbal ".

According to his description he roasted them on embers or boiled them and ate them with "oyle, vinegar and pepper". The uncommon hatred of the potato began with the plant itself. Many botanists described the potato plant as beautiful but savage looking. Worse, in 1596 the Swiss botanist Gaspard Bauhin confirmed the layperson's terror about the potato plant by declaring it part of the solanaceae – the deadly nightshade – family. ( Mandrake, henbane, tobacco all belong to that family ! ) The very people who would have benefited from the potato had only ever grown things from seeds, the very concept, that a tuber would sprout young ones if replanted, was hard to take on board and was seen as the work of the devil. Today we understand, that potatoes contain solanine (toxic to humans) in damaged or diseased potato skin ( avoid green potatoes ! ) but why in the 1620s a rumor arose in France and England, that potatoes caused leprosy ( term used for all sorts of skin conditions in the 17thcentury ), is a mystery. If these rumors were not enough to kill off any potential interest amongst the wealthier, the very fact that potatoes were vegetables, worked against them. Sweet fruit was welcome – vegetables were not. Exotic or not.

The Irish were the first to accept the potato as a field crop in the 17th century. The legend that Sir Walter Raleigh brought potatoes to Ireland in the county of Cork where he had an estate ( Youghal ) is nothing but a well established but untrue story. Unfortunately neither Raleigh nor Sir Francis Drake can be credited with the introduction of the potato to Ireland or England as there is absolutely no evidence to support this romantic fable born of the Elizabethan imagination but the potato first surfaced in the 1640s in county Wicklow thanks to the English immigrants who liked the way it suited the Irish climate. In the early 1650s English soldiers were surprised to see fields of potatoes in Ireland! Evidence suggests, that during the 1660s and 1670s the potato had already become the back-up during shortages. The English then imported specimens of the better acclimatized potatoes from Ireland and they finally appear in the 1670s growing in Lancashire and Somerset. By 1711 they were spreading around London.

By the 1680s, the only other countries where the potato made the jump from a garden plant into field crop was Flanders, the German palatinate and the French Eastern provinces and possibly the northwest of England.

Interestingly, in 1662 a gentleman from Somerset wrote to the newly charted Royal Society, that the potato might protect England from famine! In 1664 John Forster wrote a pamphlet claiming that the tuber furnished "a sure and easy remedy" for food shortages! To interest Charles II, he offered that the king might sell rights to grow and market potatoes and thus collect revenue. Charles missed this opportunity for an easy money spinner ! The potato started to be written about by people like John Evelyn but nowhere do they mention eating or enjoying it ! So, the wealthy continued growing potatoes as a curiosity in their gardens and the poor avoided it.

No later than 1600 had the agriculturist Olivier de Serres written about the potato. He had given the potato a name that was destined to be famous "cartoufle" which he got by corrupting the Italian for truffle ( tartufi) or potato ( tartuffo or tartuffolo) In the 18thcentury cartoufle became Kartoffel in German and variants in Russian, Polish and other languages.

The Burgundians nicknamed the potatoes "pomme de terre " and are also alleged to be the ones who outlawed them for causing leprosy.

Even in Paris, the magnet for the new only saw the tuber in 1665. De Combles mentioned the potato in 1749 and claims that the poor eat them roasted with salt. The better off enjoy them sliced thinly, powdered with flour and fried in butter or oil. Another way how he knew them prepared was boiled, sliced and fricasseed in butter with onion.

Prejudice did not budge easily. The French held to their fear of nightshades longer than the English. Reformers tested this stubborn myth because this was the Enlightenment but not everybody wanted to be enlightened! Somebody in Normandy claimed that the tuber must be dangerous as it turns the water dark!

By 1796 Hanna Glasse's Art of Cookery Made Plain, offers eleven potato recipes. Strangely almost half required sugar!

Sources :

· THE POTATO, Larry Zuckerman

· FOOD IN EARLY MODERN ENGLAND, Joan Thirsk

· FOOD IN EARLY MODERN EUROPE, Ken Albla

· THE GENERLL HISTORIE OF PLANTES, John Gerard

· TASTE, Kate Colquhoun

· FOOD THE HISTORY OF TASTE, Paul Freedman

· COOKING IN EUROPE 1250-1650, Ken Albala

· GARDENS & GARDENING IN EARLY MODERN ENGLAND, Jill Francis

· NATURE'S ALCHEMIST, Anna Parkinson

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Copyright 2018 by Brigitte Webster. <brigitte.webster at btinternet.com>. Permission is granted for republication in SCA-related publications, provided the author is credited. Addresses change, but a reasonable attempt should be made to ensure that the author is notified of the publication and if possible receives a copy.

If this article is reprinted in a publication, please place a notice in the publication that you found this article in the Florilegium. I would also appreciate an email to myself, so that I can track which articles are being reprinted. Thanks. -Stefan.