[Sca-cooks] 1637 Hosokawa Sansai Kaiseki Meal

[Decker, Terry D.]

The sources I have checked give the date of 1719 to the first potatoes
planted in Derry.  These were apparently imported by about 700 immigrants
from the Bann Valley in Ulster to Massachusetts, who shortly after there
arrival moved north into New Hampshire and Vermont.

Both sweet potatoes (Ipomoea batata) and white potatoes (Solanum tuberosum)
were imported into Europe during the 16th Century.  Yams (members of
Dioscorea) were already in use in the Old World.

The sweet potato seems to have been widely used in Western Europe by the
middle of the 16th Century and is believed to have been introduced into
China and Japan by the Portuguese about that time.

The white potato was not as well received or as widely used.  In 1663, the
Royal Society pushed for a widespread adoption of the potato in England as a
hedge against famine, but it did not become a major crop until the middle of
the 18th Century.  If you are interested there is quite a bit of information
in the Florilegium.

I can't find any taxonomic references for yamaimo or jinenjo, but the (bad)
photographs of the tubers and plants I can find make me think it is a member
of the Dioscorea.  A little thing called a "Japanese yam" looks suspiciously
like a member of Ipomoea.

As for the Mexican "yams," if you are talking about a sweet potato, they
came back to Europe on Columbus' first voyage. Oviedo reported in 1526 that
sweet potatoes had often been imported into Spain and that he had brought
some back to plant in Avila.  Cortez brought some back from his expedition
(also in 1526).

They probably entered England when Henry Tudor married Catherine of Aragon.
It is also report that John Hawkins brought some back to England from the
New World on one of his slaving expeditions.  And it is speculated that the
potatoes Raleigh planted on his Irish estates were sweet potatoes.

The Portuguese moved the sweet potato into the African slave trade and
brought it into Asia on their great spice hunt.

If you are inquiring about "true yams," they probably just went to market in
the New World.  Europe and Africa already had yams.

Bear

> From: ruadh [mailto:ruadh at home.com]
>
> 1671-72 IIRC the white potato comes to "Nutfield"
> [Londonderry/Derry], NH,
> USA along with Scot/Irish flax weavers from that same region
> of Ireland. So
> during your 1600's era the white spud [Murphy] was on the
> move. What's the
> possible very early Mexico connection [or travel directions]
> for its Yams ?