The crazy story of… the potato

A long time ago, her name was papa, turma de tierra, chuno, patata, cartoufle. Today, her name is Charlotte, Mona Lisa, Anabelle, or Amandine. The one that Victor Hugo nicknamed “the truffle of the poor” conquered the world and our plates: here is the story of the potato (Solanum Tuberosum L.).

Marilyn Monroe, elected Miss Potato, Idaho, 1952

In 2017, world potato production was 388 Mt. The main producer is China (22.8%), followed by India, Ukraine and Russia, before the United States… It is one of the best known plants in the world. Consumed by humans since

10,000 years, however, Europeans had to wait until the 16th century to discover it.

In the temperate heights of the Andes

The common potato is native to the Andean Cordillera, in a temperate zone that stretches from Chile to Colombia, straddling Peru and Bolivia. Long before the conquistadors seized it around 1537, the plant called papa already had enormous dietary interest among the Incas.

Indeed, the potato that we find on our plates is beginning to show a certain age: humans began to eat the wild potato (nightshade family) from 8,000 years before our era, in the Neolithic period! The oldest known specimen, Solanum maglia, dated 13,000 BC, was discovered at the archaeological site of Monte Verde, in southern Chile.

The pre-Columbian civilizations, in the heart of the Andes, were the first to have planted and cultivated it. It was even found at very high altitudes (3 to 4,000 m) unlike corn, for example. Potato cultivation has become particularly widespread in the Lake Titicaca region. The Tiwanaku, a pre-Inca civilization, managed to domesticate the potato, then partly toxic. To detoxify it and preserve it, the Native Americans washed the potatoes with plenty of water then placed them on the ground with an alternation of hot day and cold night to dry it out. Thus, it could be kept for several years.

Illustration by Herbert M. Herget (USA, 1885-1955)

Axomama, goddess of the potato

In the Inca culture the potato is a vital food like corn. As such, it becomes a sacred element and is the object of worship. We found pottery in the shape of potatoes, but also human or animal representations, with potato eyes in the region of Cuzco...

In Inca mythology, Axomama is the goddess of the potato, daughter of Pachamama, goddess of the earth. Her name , which is also spelled Acsumama or Ajomama, literally means "mother of the potato". It is formed on the words acsu and mama which designate, respectively, the potato , and the mother in quechua language.

In the Moche culture (a pre-Columbian culture that flourished in Peru between the year 100 and the year 700) it is personified in the form of terracotta ceremonial vessels.

Pottery from the Moche culture (pre-Inca pre-Columbian culture that spread all along the Peruvian northern coast, roughly between AD 100 and AD 700) depicting Axomama , goddess of the potato. - American Journal of Potato Research

The slow ascent of the "patata

It was not until the arrival of the conquistadors and their bloody conquests that the potato left America.

The first descriptions of potatoes date from the 1530s. The Spanish conquistador Pedro de Cieza de León details it as "papa", in his Crónicas del Perú and tells how local people dry it in the sun to remove toxins and that the tuber, or turma de tierra (for earth truffle), once dry, is named chuno.

In 1609, in Royal Commentaries of the Incas, the chronicler Garcilaso de la Vega described the potato: "Throughout the province of Collas, over an expanse of more than a hundred and fifty leagues, the corn does not grow, because the climate is too cold. A lot of quinoa is harvested, which is like rice, and other seeds and vegetables which bear fruit under the ground. Among them, there are there is one they call dad: it is round and very prone to rotting because of its humidity. To prevent this from happening, they put the dads on straw , for excellent ones are found in this country; they expose them to frost for several nights; indeed, throughout the year, it freezes hard in this province; and while the frost has burned them as if cooked, they cover them with straw and press them gently to release the humidity which is natural to them or which the frost causes them.Then they put them in the sun and preserve them from the serenity until they are completely dried out. Prepared in this way, the papa keeps for a long time, and takes the name of chuño.

https://www.enigmaperu.com /blog/the-art-ancestry-of-inca-farming-agriculture/

With the conquistadors, the potato began its journey around the world, first in the Canary Islands, then in Europe. Landed in Spain, she quickly took the name patata, rather than "papa" in its Amerindian version: and for good reason, in Spanish the word Papa designates the pope.

But the potato is more considered for its therapeutic than culinary virtues. It is thus found more easily in hospitals than in kitchens, where it is used to treat eczema, burns and kidney stones. King Philip II of Spain will go so far as to send seed potatoes to Pope Pius IV to help him fight malaria... which does not will not prevent him from dying.

It was Olivier de Serres (1539-1619), one of the fathers of French agriculture who, on his return from a trip to Helvetia, brought back some plants of cartoufle”, as it was called then. In 1613, the potato was even served at the table of the young King Louis XIII who did not appreciate it. And, for a long time, this vegetable was grown only as an ornamental plant!

A bad reputation

It was not until the middle of the 17th century that the potato was consumed in Europe. But before being accepted as a food worthy of the name, its main use is to stem famines.

Superstitions surrounded this still despised food: "One of the reasons why the potato is very badly received in Europe, like the tomato, is that it is attributed a whole stock of major disadvantages. first its resemblance to the truffle. Gascony people use the same word, truaut for the potato and the truffle. The truffle is a terrifying mushroom. It grows underground , it is sensitive to lunar variations and cycles: that is to say, it is a devil's mushroom, linked to death. And the potato, on l 'accused of spreading the plague. As this vegetable is frowned upon, it is given to a transforming animal par excellence, socially devalued: the pig." (source: Concordance of Times by historian Anthony Rowley)

The potato, a late reign

In his book, the Swiss botanist Gaspard Bauhin describes as he was told, that in Burgundy, the potato having been accused of carrying leprosy, was banned. In The Laughing Man, whose plot takes place at the end of the 17th century, Victor Hugo writes thus: "His acceptance of human destiny was such, that 'he ate [...] potatoes, filth with which pigs and convicts were then fed'. The potato is also rejected because of its membership in the family Solanaceae< span style="background-color: #ffffff;"> like the belladonna, nicknamed the devil's cherry (cthis plant can be very toxic, its black berries containing atropine, a substance active on the nervous system due to its anticholinergic properties) and the smell of its leaves that the appalling.

In 1740, Turgot, Minister of King Louis XIII, tried to encourage its cultivation, but without much success, the varieties then being watery, bitter and pungent. The king gives him a small plot on the Champs de Mars to carry out his cultivation trials, but no one pays attention to his first experiences.

The potato, or the "bread of the poor" - Antoine Parmentier, painted by François Dumont, in 1812.

Parmentier takes the stage!

It was in 1769, when a severe famine ravaged the population, that Parmentier intervened. This event prompted the French agronomist, (1737-1813) to look for new nourishing plants. He will gradually succeed in imposing the potato in the 18th century in France despite much reluctance.

However cultivated in France from the 16th century, it is still reserved for pig food. The personal story of Parmentier will change the destiny of the plant. Sent to Prussia in 1760, Parmentier was taken prisoner during the Seven Years' War. He was then forced to eat potatoes during his captivity and discovered that he was not bothered by it, as he wrote in 1773: "Our soldiers ate potatoes considerably in the last war they even overdid them, without having been inconvenienced; they were my only resource for more than a fortnight and I was neither tired nor indisposed."

The forbidden becomes lust

On his return from Prussia, Parmentier decided to devote himself to the study of potatoes. Thanks to his research, in 1772, the Faculty of Medicine of Paris declared the consumption of potatoes safe. While drought raged in 1785, the researcher managed to obtain the support of Louis XVI by giving him , on August 25 exactly, flowering plants of the nightshade and making him taste bread made from potato flour. We still have to convince the people. This is how, in orderto push the population to consume the famous starch, Parmentier imagines a trick that has remained famous. He managed to arouse the curiosity of Parisians by having the tuber planted in fields guarded day and night by armed soldiers. When he decides to let his guard down one night, the potato, which has become an object of desire, is immediately plundered. Thanks to the stratagem, it spreads little by little in the Paris basin. Louis XVI then thanked Parmentier for having "invented the bread of the poor".

The potato is still far from becoming a mainstream food product. In France, it will not be consumed until after the Revolution of 1789 and will only become popular during the 19th century with the great famines of 1816, at the end of the Napoleonic wars. "The Year Without Summer", with an extremely disturbed climate, destroys a large part of Europe's crops. With a higher yield than other vegetables, the potato becomes all the more essential as it produces more "food" per unit of water than any other food crop, without being very demanding. in terms of soil quality and weather conditions. The tuber is gradually becoming an essential part of the diet.

Ernest Higgins Rigg (1868-1947), The Potato Pickers

Gradually, it is becoming a predominant element of European diets, to the point of becoming central in certain types of agriculture. Paradoxically, the potato will be at the origin of the great famine in Ireland in the 19th century, where all the peasants had widely adopted it. Between 1845 and 1852, mildew almost completely wiped out local potato crops, when a third of the population depended exclusively on potatoes for food .

What now?

Two centuries later, the potato has become one of the most consumed foods in the world, in many forms. Past the reluctance of our distant ancestors to include it in the kitchen, the potato has finally met the success that we know it to the point of becoming the 3rd most consumed food in the world after rice and wheat, and to be consecrated by the UN as a means of fighting against famine. Its quantity of dry matter, which it is able to produce with little water, over a relatively short cycle, is very high. This can be a very relevant alternative to feed populations. The potato can withstand temperatures between 6 and about 30-35 degrees. It also supports very dry climates, being irrigated. The Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations (FAO) notes that it is the world's main non-grain food commodity, easy to grow and with a high energy content, with global production reaching 388 Mt.

Apart from mashed potatoes and sarladaises, what is the potato used for?

· In the textile industry, its starch is used to stiffen fabrics and consolidate threads so that they do not break during weaving.

· In agriculture, it is a fabulous organic weedkiller! Use the hot cooking water to get rid of weeds growing between your patio slabs.

· In cosmetics, it is the cheapest beauty product on the market! The potato has surprising virtues: calming, decongestant and astringent. A mask of raw potato slices will depuff tired eyes (ideal for the day after a fiesta) and soothe sunburn.

· For health, its effectiveness against torticollis has been demonstrated: slip two large cooked potatoes into a sock and apply it to your neck.

Did you know?

In our countryside in the past, having a raw potato in your pocket was a real good luck charm: it was supposed to protect you from bad encounters, protect against rheumatism and prevent kidney ailments.

In 1996, the potato boarded Columbia. For the first time, NASA will attempt to grow potatoes in space.

In 1952, Marilyn Monroe elected Miss Potato of Idaho, poses in a potato sack!