IIRC, a Frenchman first imported them to the Old World. People were suspicious about the new food, and he had guards patrol the fields at night, with instructions to not stop anyone from actually stealing them. Create a sense of them being rare and valuable and “forbidden”. I guess it worked. (Hopefully my memory isn’t failing me.)
I’ve made that joke a few times. “Thisa pasta, she is pretty good, but I wisha we had something to put on top of it!” (Of course they had other sauces pre-tomato sauce, and past came from China.)
We grew potatoes for several years in our garden during the 80s recession. They took up a bit of land, but they were productive. It is funny how most of them we pulled were smaller and misshapen compared to what you find in the store. I am sure the type we grew was partly responsible.
There was a pretty long process of getting peasants (not just in Ireland but in other places, too) of adopting the potato (which is of the nightshade family, and most farmers would have noticed the similarities between the plants), not just a single event like this. But we do know that by the 18th century, most Irish peasants were heavily dependent on the potato as their primary foodstuff for daily eating. Hence when the crop went bad several years in a row, the result was a famine of the west of the island, the poorest part of the country. And let’s not forget that at the same time, (1840s) Ireland was a NET EXPORTER of food to Europe…
That’s how making the potato “attractive” in France was described in Michael Pollan’s “Botany of Desire,” anyway. But they did stop theft, and then after interest grew, the guards got a night off, or something, leaving the fields unguarded.
I remember reading that part of the book and my main thought was, “shit, politicians used to be way more creative!”
I think the Spanish introduced them to Ireland, initially. But the process was a little longer there than other parts of Europe.
If I remember it right they were introduced kinda early as a potential cash crop, but didn’t catch on and mostly ended up as animal fodder. But then they got a big push as a solution to escalating famines. As Ireland got further into the estate system, the personal plots peasants had to raise their own food on shrank. Then a series of bad wheat harvests hit, and it wasn’t possible to feed a family on the acreage they had access too. Potatoes solved that problem, temporarily.
Spuds’ll keep you alive. And you can grow a fuck ton of them on a very small plot of land. The Irish do still eat a lot of potatoes, and they have a lot of varieties available. My cousins complain about only having 3-5 options in stores when they visit, and at least one of them was baffled by the fact that my mother only serves one potato dish in a given meal.
So it is a thing.
My cousin’s favorite supermarket in Dublin puts a large display of Lucky Charms out in the “American Section”. For Forth of July.
