I can’t dispute the wisdom of Winnie-the-Pooh’s creator. Potatoes, especially when harvested small, before their natural sugars turn to starch, are a humble delicacy known for their rich, distinctive flavors.

The “sweet corn” of the potato world, many of us remember “new potatoes” fondly as an essential ingredient in Grandma’s famous creamed-peas-and-new-potatoes, served alongside a piece of poached salmon on the Fourth of July.

Digging through my potato references to prepare for a workshop on growing small “gourmet” potatoes, I couldn’t help but be impressed with this mundane vegetable’s remarkable history.

In New England the potato’s chronicles began in 1719 with plantings by Scotch-Irish immigrants in what is now Derry, New Hampshire. Potatoes adapted to our soils and cool climate. By the 1880s Coos County farmers were producing 3,000 acres of potatoes, mostly to supply starch used in spinning mills. Throughout much of the 1900's table-stock potatoes provided a valuable cash crop for the county, one that fit well with dairy farming. The potato’s history, of course, goes back a lot farther.

It’s generally agreed that potatoes originated around 400 B.C. in the high mountains of South America, where indigenous farmers preserved the tubers by mashing them and spreading them on the ground to producean early freeze-dried product they called chuno. Along with corn and beans, potatoes were staple foods of the Incas long before the arrival of Spanish conquistadores in the 1500s. Recognized for their nutritive value, potatoes were soon introduced into Europe by the Spanish. By 1573 potatoes were used to feed hospital patients in Seville.

An odd-looking underground vegetable that grew suspiciously from “roots,” rather than seed, the potato had a checkered European experience. Most considered it a food fit only for the poor, those of low birth, and animals. Frightful maladies of that era were also attributed to this possibly poisonous plant, leprosy, syphilis, and madness among them. Like tomatoes, which had similar market resistance, potatoes are members of the deadly nightshade family. (Curiously, tobacco, also in the Solanaceae family, didn’t seem to have that problem.)

Perhaps the potato’s reputation had something to do with a banquet once held for the local gentry by Queen Elizabeth I. Instead of using the unwholesome-looking tubers, the chefs cooked up and served the plant’s toxic tops. Banquet-goers promptly became deathly ill and potatoes were thereafter banned from court.

Flummery (wheat cooked in spiced milk) and fruenty (boiled oatmeal and bran) might have remained a dinner-table mainstay, rather than evolving into today’s breakfast food, if not for A.A. Parmentier. Botanist and soldier, Parmentier was captured by the Prussians several times during the course of the Seven Years’ War. While in prison, he was fed and apparently developed a taste for potatoes (German peasants having been forced to grow them by Frederick II since 1744).

Returning to France, Parmentier convinced Louis XVI to let him use a sandy plot of land, where he established a lush potato plantation, which he kept under constant armed guard. (Removing the guards at night encouraged curious thieves to run off with the tubers and replant them elsewhere.)

Parmentier also convinced Louis and Marie Antoinette to wear potato flowers on their clothes and in their hair, starting a fashion trend soon imitated by other aristocrats. Potatoes, now served at court, became upscale. Herbalists further helped their popularity, heralding potatoes as a health food that could cure diarrhea and tuberculosis, although the plant also acquired a reputation as a dangerous aphrodisiac.
 
In America, both Ben Franklin, who once attended a dinner at French court where 20 potato dishes were served, and Tom Jefferson, were early proponents of potato culture. Jefferson may get the credit for inventing French fries, which he served at the White House during his presidency.

And so, the simple tater’s influence can be traced through history. As a staple food introduced to prevent starvation, potatoes themselves, or near-total reliance on them, helped cause the Irish Potato Famine in the mid-1800s, when a fungal disease destroyed entire crops.

During the Alaskan Klondike Gold-Rush miners thought potatoes worth almost their weight in gold, because of their high food value and rich Vitamin C content. Potatoes also became the first vegetable grown in space by NASA, in experiments intended to feed astronauts on long voyages or in extra-terrestrial colonies.
 
What’s next for the humble pomme de terre? Inventor Henry Ford once said there was enough potential ethyl alcohol fuel in an acre of potatoes to power the machinery necessary to cultivate it for the next 100 years. From the looks of gas prices, I think I’ll be planting more potatoes this spring. No, I won’t be turning them into tractor fuel. But I figure the more food I produce for myself, the fewer trips I’ll have to take to the grocery store.

By Steve Turaj, UNH Cooperative Extension Agricultural Resources

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