SC - RE: Help with 1650s + info: potatoes

[RANDALL DIAMOND]

On Sat Feb 2000 04 Thomas Gloning 
<gloning at Mailer.Uni-Marburg.DE> writes:

>It seems that the use of potatoes became _widespread_ 
>in Europe somewhen in the 17th and 18th centuries, 
>depending on the region. But the earliest culinary uses 
>and experiments in Europe are known since the
>16th century. 

Many thanks Thomas for your valuable 
documentation on potatoes in northern European
sources.  Your #2 source particularly agrees with
data I just found on the widespread cultivation of 
potatoes in Italy by the middle of the sixteenth century.
Interesting that I was reading about potatoes
in period in a new book I got on Ebay, FOOD
IN HISTORY, by Reay Tannahill.  According to
the author, potatoes were cultivated in quantity in 
Spain by 1573 and had spread around the Mediterranean
to Italy rather quickly after the conquest of Peru.  By 1601, 
the botonist Jules Charles de l'Ecluse wrote they were so 
common a food in Italy that they had ceased to be 
considered a delicacy  and "were cooked with mutton in 
the same manner as they do with turnips and the 
roots of carrots.   By 1619, potatoes were
banned in Burgundy and the rumor established that too
frequent use of potatoes caused leperosy.  This seems
to have stopped the northward spread of the vegetable
as such rumor persisted into the 18th century in France 
(according to the author).   There was a reference though 
that potatoes by that time were eaten by the Swiss in large
quantities.
Tannahill also states that corn (maize) was brought back to 
Portugal by Columbus and it quickly became very popular
boiled and as meal in the Mediterranean area of France and
Italy, but suffered a sudden decline in popularity when it was
grown in Africa as ship's food for the slave trade.  Maize was 
then (according to Tannahill) largely reduced to a staple of the
very poor in these areas and did not regain popularity with
the upper classes until the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries.

Does anyone put any credence in this author's work?  I am
unfamiliar with this book, though Book of the Month scarcely
is an authorative laud for good scholarship in period cooking.
Any opinions?  Is this author credible or is the book largely
sensationalist in its reporting of food history?  I have not seen
some of these claims before in other sources and I have not
yet had time to look over her documentation.  As the subjet
of potatoes seemed to mesh, I thought I would ask around
for opinions.

Akim Yaroslavich
"No glory comes without pain"