Spudophilia

“What I say is that, if a fellow really likes potatoes, 
he must be a pretty decent sort of fellow.” 
– A.A. Milne

 I’ve just come in from planting this year’s potatoes—Austrian Crescents, Yellow Finns, Cali-whites, and Gold Nuggets. Dirt under my fingernails, with prayers directed to the potato goddess, Axomamma (one of the daughters of Pachamamma), I thought I’d share this quick romp through the history of the potato adopted from an essay I wrote a while back for farmer-ish magazine. If you are not yet as enamored of the mighty tuber as I am, perhaps this will bring you closer to spudophilia.

 Spanish conquistadors came to the New World looking for gold. What they found were the Inca, an empire 12 million strong, the largest civilization on the planet, master engineers of canals and aqueducts, suspension bridges and a 25,000-mile system of roads, superb stone masons, the visionaries, architects and builders of Machu Pichu. And, although this is not listed as one of the top ten achievements of this extraordinary civilization: the domesticators of the potato.  

 The Inca had tamed and been farming a rainbow of wild Peruvian tubers many thousands of years before the Spanish arrived. A staple of their diet, the core of their diet, these potatoes originated high in the Andes and had learned to flourish in poor soil, thin air, and radical temperature changes. They were white, yellow, red, pink, black, and purple; small and sweet, big and floury; tender, firm, buttery, bitter. Modern-day genetic testing of thousands of potato cultivars worldwide pinpoints a singular birthplace for all spuds: the Andean mountains, home of the Inca.

 Potatoes literally fueled that great empire. The Inca cultivated them, created a cuisine around them, dried them (they invented freeze-drying), and stashed them in concealed bins for use in case of war or famine. They used them to create medicine.

 The spud makes its way from the highlands of Peru to Europe sometime in the mid-1500s aboard a Spanish ship, possibly brought over as a souvenir or curio. It begins its European life with an image problem born of the prejudice of the conquerors. The accomplished, masterful Inca, who not only built a “wonder of the world,” but were, themselves, wonders of the world, were considered savages by the Spaniards. If the tuber was the staple of savages, of conquered people, how could it be part of a respectable European diet? 

 Potatoes, when they were grown, were fed to hogs. Wherever the potato was introduced as food for the table—Italy, Belgium, Germany, Austria, England, France–it was slandered. In France and elsewhere, the potato was accused of causing leprosy, syphilis, sterility, rampant sexuality, and early death, perhaps not in that order.

 But it was, in fact, a Frenchman who finally made the potato respectable. Army pharmacist Antoine-Austin Parmentier, captured by the Prussians during the Seven Year War, was fed a potato-only diet in prison—and survived. Back in France, he pursued pioneering studies in food chemistry that showed the potato was healthy and nutritious. Parmentier promoted the potato as an inexpensive way to feed the hungry and persuaded Louis XVI to allow him to plant spuds on 100 unpromising acres of royal land. The potato gained a noble pedigree.

 But Parmentier, a tireless proselytizer and clever promoter, was only just getting started. He mounted a series of publicity stunts to elevate and celebrate the humble potato, including a potato-only feast in 1783. His guests included Benjamin Franklin, then the U.S. Minister to France, along with the man who would become the third U.S. president, Thomas Jefferson. They feasted on a banquet of 20 potato-centric dishes. Both men were suitably impressed. A copy of Parmentier’s treatise on the potato found its way to Jefferson’s library at Monticello. 

 And now you know.