SC - OT Where are Mordonna's Priorities?

[Bonne of Traquair]

The first written reference to white potatoes occurs in 1553.  A specimen
brought to Spain  from Pizzaro's Peruvian expedition is supposed to have
reached Pope Paul III around 1540 and from there been given to a
horticulturalist from France.  There is evidence that they were used as
starvation rations at one of the hospitals in Seville in the 16th Century.
And there are supposed to be some late 16th Century German recipes (about
which there was an interesting thread several months ago where one of the
cited sources apparently does not have the stated recipe, IIRC).  

There is some conflict about when the white potato came into general use.
It may have been used in Western Europe to replace crops destroyed during
the Thirty Years War, but learned debates from the same period suggest that
the potato was in use but not common fare.  During the 18th Century,
potatoes became common fare in much of Europe.  Russia was a late adopter of
the potato and it was forced on the Russian peasantry by armed troops,
probably so the nobles could export more grain.  

The increased use of the potato as poverty fare would be consistent with
Braudel's documentation of a trend of falling wages and rising food prices
from the late 16th Century to the late 19th Century. 

In any event, the white potato was common peasant fare across Europe by the
19th Century just in time to start mass immigrations to the United States
during the potato famines of the 1840's. 

Bear

>   I'm sorry i seemed to have missed the beginig of this thread.  Do we
> have 
> a date for the first use of potatoes for a human food in Europe?
> 
> Lady Katherine McGuire
> 
> 
> >In a message dated 10/24/99 2:46:39 AM Eastern Daylight Time,
> ddfr at best.com
> >writes:
> >
> ><< Do we know how fast potatoes went into use in the countryside? My 
> >general
> >  impression is that where new food crops had a substantial advantage
> over
> >  old ones, as potatoes in some areas clearly did, they could go into use
> >  pretty fast. Peasants may be conservative, but they are also hungry.
> >   >>
> >
> >In general, from the time a new food crop is introduced until it can be 
> >said
> >to be 'commonly' used appears to average about 20 years. Some crops
> become
> >popular sooner than others (e.g., capsicums, tobacco and New World
> >cucurbits). For other crops the time is inexplicably longer (e.g.,
> tomatoes
> >and sweet peppers). Some crops seem to have been cultivated commonly
> >relatively early after their initial introduction but appear to have been
> >used for animal food (e.g., potatoes and maize).
> >
> >In the case of potatoes, Russian peasants were apparently forced to grow 
> >and
> >eat potatoes by their government.
> >
> >Ras
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