SC - "Irish" Potatoes

[Elise Fleming]

Laurene wrote:

>   I had seen that comment before that "Potatoes aren't period" but I 
>don't see how this is possible.  There were Irish people living during 
>Medival times, and  potatoes in Ireland are a STAPLE food! 

Those are true statements but not true at the same time of history.  
Potatoes in Ireland were not at staple in our time period.

> In fact, I saw on TLC once, where hundreds of thousands of Irish men 
>women and children starved to death at one point (sorry, it was a few 
>months ago, and I dont' remember the date cited) because of a blight 
>brought in from England that destroyed ALL the potato crops on the 
>Island. 

The Irish potato famine was in the mid-1800s.  This is when so many 
Irish came to North American and became, at that time, the lowest 
class.

One problem for us is that "old" can be 100 years  A "long time" might 
be 150 or 200 years and that is not within our SCA time frame.  You 
might like to read Sophie Coe's _America's First Cuisines_, 1994, 
University of Texas Press, ISBN (paperback) 0-292-71159-X.  She deals 
with the foods we have been discussing and presents one of the best 
arguments why many of these foods were not readily accepted by the 
Western people.  We modern folk have a problem because we _know_ 
potatoes taste nice; corn fresh off the cob is delicious; tomatoes are 
juicy and oh-so-tangy sweet.  However, as I mentioned, she presents a 
very convincing case for our _not_ including these in Renaissance 
menues.  While the foods were carried back, and some were even planted 
and grown, for the most part they did not appear to be widely accepted 
as part of the Western diet.  Some of the more popular modern foods 
only came into our diet via their introduction through the Orient.

Check to see if your library has a copy.  If not, order one from Poison 
Pen Press or elsewhere!

Alys Katharine


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