Potatoes

The poor benighted potato has generally been treated dismissively as a cheap stomach filler, or a backgrounder to the main event of meat or fish. Yet it’s a vegetable with a remarkably sophisticated history. 

It’s believed cultivation of the tuber may have begun 10,000 years ago in South America. However, because potatoes don’t preserve well, physical evidence hasn’t been found that far back, only artistic references on pottery remains so this is conjecture. The earliest actual remains date to 2500 BC, at Ancón in Peru. That’s where the potato’s domestication is thought to have begun, as well as in Bolivia, between 8000 and 5000 BC. 

This is the time of year to eat them as the delicacies the new season’s potatoes surely are. There is hardly a better treat than the tiny Jersey Royals coming in now, or the new Rattes or other fingerlings, boiled or steamed and eaten just with a thick slice of a good brand of cold butter melting over them like a climate-crisis icecap and a generous grinding of black pepper, with a spring salad on the side. In the winter, is there anything more comforting than a baked potato with a crisp skin, its interior fluffed up with an excess of butter? Present it the American way with fried bacon bits, chopped onion and sour cream instead of butter and you have a meal for the angels.

Evidence of the potato’s first formal arrival in Europe is a receipt dated 28 November 1567 for delivery between the Canary Islands’ Las Palmas and Antwerp. The second piece of evidence - to the British Isles - is between 1588 and 1593, the entry of these potatoes more casual, in the baggage of sailors along with plundered silver and other precious souvenirs. Readily stored, they became useful nourishment on long voyages, which was probably the reason why they were regarded with some scorn as a food for poor people. It was fishermen from the Basque country in Spain with their supply of potatoes for their voyages across the Atlantic in the 16th century, who introduced the tuber to western Ireland where they dropped  anchor to dry their cod. 

By the end of the 16th century, it was growing widely in Northern France. In his 1774 “Examen chymique des pommes de terres” ("Chemical examination of potatoes"), French physician Antoine Parmentier, who gave his name to the most delicious thick potato soup, demonstrated the potato’s huge nutritious value. King Louis XVI and his court fell for the new vegetable and promoted it enthusiastically, with Queen Marie Antoinette wearing a headdress of potato flowers at a fancy dress ball. By 1815, France’s annual potato crop soared to 21 million hectolitres (1 hectolitre = 100 litres) then in 1840 to 117 million.

They spread at speed across Europe. With the explosion in 1845 of the population in Ireland, the planting of potatoes took up one-third of the land. They became a popular replacement there for their previous cheap stomach fillers, turnip and rutabaga, as they did among the poor across Europe. Other advantages of potatoes was their nutritional value and lower rate of spoilage.

There are almost as many varieties of potato as there are pulses in the legumes and pulses family, with different types pitched at different jobs. With any luck, May will launch the start of the eating outdoors season with barbecues being rolled out when if it is still a little chilly, people can gather around the flaming stove. Indoors or out, this recipe makes the most of the humble potato salad.

800g new potatoes, scrubbed but not peeled
2 teaspoons wholegrain mustard
2 tablespoons muscatel or white wine vinegar
4 tablespoons olive oil
1 shallot, very finely chopped
3 tablespoons mayonnaise
2 tablespoons soured cream
1 tablespoon horseradish sauce
Juice of ¼ lemon
2 spring onions, finely sliced on the diagonal
6 rashers of bacon, fried till crisp, drained on paper then crumbled (optional)

Boil the potatoes into a large pan of cold salted water and simmer until tender, about 10 minutes.

Whisk the mustard, vinegar, olive oil and chopped shallot together with a good pinch of salt and a grind of pepper. When the potatoes are cool enough to handle, peel if you wish, then halve, quarter or cut them into bite-sized chunks if large. Toss thoroughly in the mustard dressing until completely coated. Leave to cool completely.

​Mix together the mayonnaise, soured cream, lemon juice and horseradish. Once the potatoes are cool, toss them thoroughly in the mayonnaise mixture along with the spring onions.     

This column written by Julia Watson originally appeared in the May 2022 edition of The Bugle.