5th Century B.C.
In the ancient ruins of Peru and Chile, archaeologists have found potato
remains that date back to 500 B.C. The Incas grew and ate them and also
worshipped them. They even buried potatoes with their dead, they stashed
potatoes in concealed bins for use in case of war or famine, they dried
them, and carried them on long journeys to eat on the way (dried or soaked
in stew). Ancient Inca potatoes had dark purplish skins and yellow flesh.
The Incas called the potato "papas," as they do today. Following is the Inca
prayer that historians say they used to worship them.
"O Creator! Thou who givest life to all things and hast made men that
they may live, and multiply. Multiply also the fruits of the earth, the
potatoes and other food that thou hast made, that men may not suffer
from hunger and misery."
16th Century A.D.
The Spanish conquistadors first encountered
the potato when they begin arrived in Peru in 1532 in search of gold.
1540
- Pedro de Cieza de Leon
(1518–1560), Spanish Conquistador and historian, who wrote about the potato
in his chronicles, Chronicles of Peru, in 1540:
"In the vicinities of Quito the inhabitants have with to the maize an
other plant that serves to support in great part their existence: the
potatoes, that they are of the roots similar to the tubercoli, supplies
of one rind more or little hard; when they come bubbled they become to
hold like the cooked chestnuts; seccate to the sun call to them
chuno and they are conserved for the use."
1565
- Spanish explorer and conqueror, Gonzalo Jiminez de Quesada (1499-1579),
took the potato to Spain in lieu of the gold he did not find. The Spanish
though that they were a kind of truffle and called them "tartuffo." Potatoes
were soon a standard supply item on the Spanish ships; they noticed that the
sailors who ate papas (potatoes) did not suffer from scurvy.
1597
- John Gerard (1545-1612), an British author, avid gardener, and collector of
rare plants, received roots of the plant from Virginia where he was able to
successfully grow it in his own garden. He wrote in his book The herball,
the following about the potato:
"Potatoes of the Virginia. The potato of the Virginia has many coppers
flexible cables and that crawl for earth... The root is thick, large and
tuberosa; not much various one for shape, color and sapore from common
potatoes (the sweet potatoes) but a smaller Pò; some are round as
spheres, other ovals; the some longer other shortest ones... It grows
spontaneously in America where, as Clusius has reported, it has been
discovered; from then I have received these roots from the Virginia
otherwise Norembega calls; they grow and they prosper in my garden like
in their country of origin... Its correct name is cited in the title it.
Poichè it possesses not only the shape and the proportions of potatoes,
but also their gradevole sapore and virtue we can call them potatoes of
the America or Virginia."
NOTE: Although potatoes were called "potatoes of the Virginia" by early
English botanists, they were in fact from South America, not the state of
Virginia in the United States.
The potato
was carried on to Italy and England about 1585, to Belgium and Germany
by 1587, to Austria about 1588, and to France around 1600. Wherever the
potato was introduced, it was considered weird, poisonous, and downright
evil. In France and elsewhere, the potato was accused
of causing not only leprosy, but also syphilis, narcosis, scronfula,
early death, sterillity, and rampant sexuality, and of destroying the
soil where it grew. There was so much opposition to the potato that an
edict was made in the town of Besancon, France stating:
"In view of the fact that the potato is a pernicious substance whose use
can cause leprosy, it is hereby forbidden, under pain of fine, to
cultivate it."
1588
-An Irish legend says that ships of the Spanish Armada, wrecked off the
Irish coast in 1588, were carrying potatoes and that some of them washed
ashore.
1589
- Sir Walter Raleigh (1552-1618), British explorer and historian known for
his expeditions to the Americas, first brought the potato to Ireland and
planted them at his Irish estate at Myrtle Grove, Youghal, near Cork,
Ireland. Legend has it that he made a gift of the potato plant to Queen
Elizabeth I (1533-1603). The local gentry were invited to a royal banquet
featuring the potato in every course. Unfortunately, the cooks were
uneducated in the matter of potatoes, tossed out the lumpy-looking tubers
and brought to the royal table a dish of boiled stems and leaves (which are
poisonous), which promptly made everyone deathly ill. The potatoes were then
banned from court.
18th Century A.D.
1719
- Potatoes had been introduced to the United States several times throughout
the 1600s. They were not widely grown for almost a century until 1719, when
they were planted in Londonderry, New Hampshire, by Scotch-Irish immigrants,
and from there spread across the nation.
1771
- Antoine-Augustin Parmentier (1737-1813), a French military chemist and
botanist, won a contest sponsored by the Academy of Besancon to find a food
"capable of reducing the calamities of famine"
with his study of the potato called Chemical Examination of the Potato.
According to historical account, he was taken prisoner five times by the
Prussians during the Seven Years' War (1756-1763) and obliged to survive on
a diet of potatoes. He also served dinners at which all courses were made of
potatoes. Many French potato dishes now bear his name today.
In 1785,
Parmentier persuades Louis XVI (1754–1793), King of France, to encourage
cultivation of potatoes. The King let him plant 100 useless acres outside
Paris, France in potatoes with troops keeping the field heavily guarded.
This aroused public curiosity and the people decided that anything so
carefully guarded must be valuable. One night Parmentier allowed the guards
to go off duty, and the local farmers, as he had hoped, went into the field,
confiscated the potatoes and planted them on their own farms. From this
small start, the habit of growing and eating potatoes spread. It is said
that Marie Antoinette (1755-1793), Queen of France and married to Louis XVI,
often pinned potato flowers in her curls. Because of her, ladies of the era
wore potato blossoms in their hair.
1774
- Russian peasant refused to have anything to do with the potato until the
mid 1700s. Frederick the Great (1712-1786) sent free potatoes to the
starving peasants after the famine of 1774, but they refused to touch them
until soldiers were sent to persuade them.
19th Century A.D.
1836 - Although potatoes are grown throughout the United States, no
state is more associated with the potato than Idaho. The first potatoes in
Idaho were planted by a Presbyterian missionary, Henry Harmon Spalding
(1804-1874). Spalding established a mission at Lapwai in 1836 to bring
Christianity to the Nez Perce Indians. He wanted to demonstrate that they
could provide food for themselves through agriculture rather than hunting
and gathering. His first crop was a failure, but the second year the crop
was good. After that, the potato growing ended for a number of years because
the Indians massacred the people of a nearby mission, so Spalding left the
area.
1845-1849
- The "Great Famine" or also called the "Great Starvation" in Ireland was
caused because the potato crop became diseased. At the height of the famine
(around 1845), at least one million people died of starvation. This famine
left many poverty stricken families with no choice but to struggle for
survival or emigrate out of Ireland. Towns became deserted, and all the best
shops closed because store owners were forced to emigrate due to the amount
of unemployment. Over one and a half million people left Ireland for North
America and Australia. Over just a few years, the population of Ireland
dropped by one half, from about 9 million to little more than 4 million.
According to a
book written in 1962 called The Great Hunger: Ireland 1845-1849
by Cecil Woodham-Smith:
"That cooking any food other than a potato had become a lost art. Women
hardly boiled anything but potatoes. The oven had become unknown after
the introduction of the potato prior to the Great Starvation."
1850s
- Most Americans consider the potato as food for animals rather than for
humans. As late as the middle of the 19th Century, the Farmer's Manual
recommended that potatoes
"be grown near the hog pens as a convenience towards feeding the hogs."
1861 - In Isabella Beeton's 1862 book called Book of Household
Management, she wrote about the potato:
"It is generally supposed that the water in which potatoes are boiled is
injurious; and as instances are recorded where cattle having drunk it
were seriously affected, it may be well to err on the safe side, and
avoid its use for any alimentary purpose."
1872 - It was not until the Russet Burbank potato was developed by
American horticulturist Luther Burbank (1849-1926) in 1872 that the Idaho
potato industry really took off. Burbank, while trying to improve the Irish
potato, developed a hybrid that was more disease resistant. He introduced
the Burbank potato to Ireland to help combat the blight epidemic. He sold
the rights to the Burbank potato for $150, which he used to travel to Santa
Rosa, California. In Santa Rosa, he established a nursery garden,
greenhouse, and experimental farms that have become famous throughout the
world. By the early 1900s, the Russet Burbank potato began appearing
throughout Idaho.
20th and 21st Centuries A.D.
Today, the potato is so common and plentiful in the Western diet that it is
taken for granted. We seem to forget that the potato has only been with us
for a few hundred years.
Sources:
As American As Apple Pie, by Philllip Stephen Schulz, published by Simon
and Schuster, 1990.
A
Brief History of the Idaho Potato Industry, by The Idaho Potato Commission,
an internet web site.
Chilies to Chocolate, by NelsonFoster and Linda S. Cordell, published by
The University of Arizona Press, 1992.
An
Internet Modern History Source Book, an internet web site.
Food - An Authoritative and Visual History and Dictionary of the Food of the
World, by Waverley Root, published by Smithmark,
1980.
Food
Museum, Potato, an internet web site.
Growing and Cooking Potatoes, by Mary W. Cronog,
published by Yankee, Inc., 1981.
Royal Cookbook - Favorite Court Recipes From The World's Royal Families,
published b Parents' Magazine Press.
Sauerkraut Yankees, Pennsylvania - German Foods and Foodways,
by William Woys Weaver, published by University of Pennsylvania Press, 1983.
Tallyrand's Culinary Fare, by Jos Wellman, an internet web site.
The Columbia Encyclopedia, Sixth Edition,
2001.
The Food Chronology, by James Trager, published by
Henry Holt and Company 1995.
The Great Hunger: Ireland 1845-1849, by Cecil
Blanche Fitz Gerald Woodham Smith, Cecil Woodham-Smith, Charles Woodham,
New York: Harper and Row Publishers, 1962.
The Herball, or, Generall Historie of Plantes,
by John Gerard, London, Printed by A. Islip, J. Norton,
and R. Whitakers, 1636). Secondedition revised by Thomas Johnson (d.
1644) and first published in 1597.
The Night 2000 Men Came To Dinner and Other Appetizing Anecdotes, by
Douglas G. Meldrum, published by Charles Scribner's Sons, 1994.
The Potato Book,
by Myrna Davis, published by William Morrow & Company, Inc., 1972.
Whole Foods Companion, by Dianne Onstad, published by Chelsea Green
Publishing Company, 1996. |