Learn lots of fascinating things about the potato.
& Chips h ! is
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F
THE POTATO
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Potatoes have been farmed in Peru for at least 4,000 years. However, Europeans didn’t find out about them until the 16th century. In 1524 the Spanish landed in South America and found all kinds of new things to eat: tomatoes, peanuts, cacao beans, hot peppers, and potatoes. A journal entry by an anonymous member of a Spanish expedition in 1536 described the potatoes he found in the Andean village of Sorocota as dark and small, almost as small as peanuts. At first, the potatoes were used to feed ships’ crews. It stopped them getting scurvy. Many people were frightened of the potato because it is a member of the deadly nightshade family, all of which are very poisonous. But very soon, the potato became a staple food. It was a more reliable crop than wheat. European immigrants took potatoes to North America several times throughout the 1600s. At first, they were mostly used as animal fodder.
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Ironically, the potato, which had saved so many lives, was responsible for a terrible famine in Ireland. The potato had been introduced into Ireland in the mid-1700s. By the 1800s, Irish peasants were eating a daily average of 10 potatoes per person. The potatoes supplied about 80% of the calories in their diet, plus the potatoes were used to feed their animals – animals which provided milk, meat and eggs to supplement their diet. This dependence on one food crop was dangerous, but no other crop seemed to be so reliable. But in the 1840s, disaster struck. There were three successive years of “late blight” (a microscopic fungus), and this fungus destroyed the potato crops in the ground. Without potatoes, both the peasants and animals went hungry. And when the animals died, there was no more milk, meat and eggs. More than one million of Ireland’s 8 million inhabitants died of starvation; and almost 2 million emigrated (mostly to America). The population of Ireland was reduced by almost 25% (and has never regained its former numbers to this day). In America, the fried potatoes you get in McDonald’s, etc, are called French fries. In Britain, they’re known as chips. The first commercial use of French fries is supposedly in 1864 when Joseph Malines of London put “fish and chips” on the menu. His success inspired others across Europe. One of the first recorded accounts of the use of
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the word “French” fries is from Thomas Jefferson. He tried them in Paris and brought the recipe home. At a White House dinner in 1802, the menu included “potatoes served in the French manner”. But that’s not how they got their name. French fries actually got their name in 1918. During World War One there were many American soldiers in France. They ate lots of the fried potatoes and they called them “French fries”. They liked them so much they wanted to have them at home, too. These days, Americans still love French fries: in just one year more than 2 billion kilos of them were sold in the US. A Native-American chef called George Crum gets the credit for inventing potato chips (or “crisps” as they are known in Britain). He did it by accident in 1853, thanks to a cranky customer: railroad magnate Commodore Cornelius Vanderbilt. One evening, Vanderbilt was in the Moon Lake House Hotel in Saratoga Springs, New York when he ordered some fried potatoes. He wanted them really thin, the way the French made them. He kept sending them back to Mr Crum, saying that they were too thick. Finally, Mr Crum decided he’d had enough, and cut the potatoes paper-thin, fried them to a crisp, then covered them with salt. Vanderbilt thought they were great, and after that, “Saratoga Crisps” became a popular item on the hotel’s menu. The word “ketchup” comes from the Siamese word “kechiap”, which is a
