Sustenance, thy name is spud!: Ode To A Tuber
Like many things in our society today, the common potato, Solanum tuberosum, has taken on a complicated, overbred, show-me-something-I-don't-already-know aura. And it has risen proudly, in all its farinaceous glory, to the occasion.
With names like Bintje, Desiree, Rose Fir, Boston Comrade, Rhoderick Dhu. With colors beyond its original humble milky-white, now yellow, purple, pink. Sizes can range from tiny fingerling to a full one pound. It's now considered worthy of infusing with truffles and caviar. Potatoes have been seen towering in gaufrette pyramids at the finest restaurants.
Could this be the musty, dusty, ubiquitous vegetable of our youth? It's gone from comfort food to blank slate for a palate of flavors. From Peru to Ireland to Long Island, the potato has been a staple, the economy, survival.
Once considered poisonous and only grown for its ornamental purple or white flowers, this distant cousin of the deadly nightshade was first consumed in America around 1560. In 1534, Spanish explorers, in their search for gold and silver, found potatoes being cultivated by the Incas, 8,000 feet high in the Andes. The tuber was already a staple for this civilization that stretched more than 2,000 miles from what is now Ecuador to Chile.
Other countries were slow to accept the potato. The English wouldn't eat them with any regularity for 250 years. Many Germans refused to touch them as late as 1744. In France, around 1785, potatoes became fashionable because Louis XVI and Marie Antoinette were fond of them.
The Irish were the first since the Incas to cultivate potatoes extensively. Unfortunately, though they relied on them almost exclusively for their diet, they had only bred one strain.
As a result of a tragic blight in 1845-1846, millions of people died. A rapidly spreading fungus rotted the tubers, causing a famine. Many of the Irish who survived immigrated to the United States, greatly altering the population and political makeup of their new country.
Because of its cool temperatures and sandy soil, Long Island was for a long time potato-farming heaven. Its golden age was probably around 1960, when there were 42,699 acres in production and they yielded 11.9 million 100-pound bags of potatoes.
Due to adverse weather, restrictions on certain pesticides, and most of all development, the potato industry here has been in steady decline. While there are few prettier sights and more earthy smells than an expansive field of potatoes as far as the eye can see, it is understandable for potato farmers to give up the hard labor and sell the land to builders.
Hence the East End landscape is now dotted with odd and modern houses and Norman Jaffe wannabes that look as if they sprouted from the fields overnight.
The largest consumers of potatoes are the Belgians, who eat over a pound per person every day. The French are not far behind, consuming 420 pounds per citizen per year. Americans eat about 120 pounds each per year, but half of that is in processed form. (Let's hear it for McDonald's and Ore Ida!)
The Germans built a statue thanking Raleigh for introducing the potato to Europe. The Elizabethans were convinced it was an aphrodisiac. The United States Department of Agriculture assures us that we could survive on a diet of potatoes and whole milk.
So let us celebrate the homely tuber. While it is a common vegetable, accepted into our daily diet, and taken for granted, it is worthy of dignity. Sustenance, thy name is spud!
Laura Donnelly is a freelance writer who lives in East Hampton.