Leave it to the French to hate the vegetable they’re possibly most famous for.
In the 18th century, potatoes were seen as little better than livestock feed. They thought that potatoes were the cause of leprosy, so they were banned in 1748.
As a prisoner of war, Antoine-Augustin Parmentier was fed only potatoes by his Prussian captors. It was a great surprise to him that he didn’t die. In fact, he found himself boiling ‘em, mashing ‘em, putting ‘em in a stew. Upon his release, he began demonstrating all the yummy ways potatoes could be consumed. France lifted its potato ban in 1772 and the country earned a reputation for inventing some of the tastiest potato dishes ever.
Potatoes aren’t native to Europe. They’re a gift to the world from the mountains of Peru and Bolivia, where they’ve been consumed since 8000BCE. But the first cultivars of this tuber – which are actually still grown today – were incredibly bitter and slightly poisonous. People noticed that llamas would lick clay before eating potatoes, which led to people mixing potatoes in clay and water. Today, these potatoes are sold with a clay dust to prevent any digestive upset.
By the time colonizers encountered the potato, South American peoples had selectively bred out the poison, creating potatoes that were tasty and more uniform in size. However, potatoes taken back to Europe failed to thrive with little sunlight. The Spanish began growing potatoes on the Canary Islands and importing them.
But here’s what I find fascinating; Europeans were initially rather suspicious of potatoes. Not because they were once poisonous – frankly, they never knew that as fact. No, no, it was for a far stupider reason; it’s because they weren’t mentioned in The Bible (neither was cabbage, but at least it had the dignity to grow above the ground). The Scots would plant them on Good Friday and sprinkle the plants with holy water.
While France is famous for their culinary take on potatoes, Ireland is obviously most famous for growing them. They eagerly embraced potatoes as a staple food, as it was perfect for Irish winters and easily grown in their climate (by then, selective breeding had made potatoes more amenable to European climes.) It was so universally adopted as a crop that the potato blight devastated the Irish people; the subsequent Irish Potato Famine killed an eighth of the country’s population and forever damaged their economy (which the British government did little to help). The unexpected silver lining of this tragedy was steps forward in agricultural study aimed at ensuring this would never happen again.
Potato mashing tools have existed since Peruvians began mushing them up with clay. First it was rocks, then carved wood (not unlike a mortar and pestle). Various tools were developed, eventually being made of metal. The S-shaped wire masher that we’re so familiar with became the favorite by the 1800s. This tool is the one that does the most literal mashing; you keep working the potatoes to get rid of the lumps, which releases gelatinized starches… so, basically, glue.
In 1887, Jacob Fitzgerald was awarded a patent for a “potato-masher and fruit-crusher.” This little gadget would become known as the potato ricer. This tool gets the potates into the smallest possible pieces with the least amount of mushing. This produces silky, lump-free mashed potatoes that aren’t at all gluey. (If you go to Thanksgiving and the mashed potatoes suck, may I suggest a potato ricer as a holiday gift?)
Attempts to dehydrate potatoes date back to the Incan empire. Unfortunately, the phenols in the potatoes would cause the rehydrated potatoes to be purple, acidic and weird. In the 1950s, the Eastern Regional Research Center developed a decent instant potato; they dried the cooked potatoes much faster, minimizing that release of gelatinized starches we talked about. One of their researchers, Miles Willard, took potato flakes and developed something extraordinary: Pringles.