[Sca-cooks] Potatoes, revisited

[Terry Decker]

Both sweet potatoes (Ipomea batata) and white potatoes (Solanum tuberosum)
come from South America.  Sweet potatoes had a wider distribution into the
Caribbean and Central America than white potatoes, which were mostly limited
to the Andes highlands.

Christopher Columbus found sweet potatoes on his first voyage in 1492.
White potatoes probably were not found until 1537 when Gonzalvo Jiminez de
Quesada lead an expedition into the Columbian interior and founded Bogota.

There were no potatoes in North America.  However, John Gerard received
specimens in 1586 which he labelled "potatoes of Virginia."  There are two
possible explanations.  First, it was not a potato but an American groundnut
(Apios americana).  Second, Francis Drake returned from his sack of
Cartagena via Virginia and brought back the first Roanoke Colony.  Drake
spent six weeks in Cartegena and reprovisioned his fleet.  The potatoes may
represent part of that provisioning.  Gerard's identification of potatoes
with Virginia caused many historians to believe that white potatoes were
found in North America, a point that has been disproven by the botanists.

Drake may have encountered white potatoes on an island off the Chilean coast
in 1578, but they would not have survived the remaining two years voyage of
his circumnavigation of the globe.

The first known use of white potatoes in Europe is in Seville in 1573.  They
were unknown in most of northern Europe until 1586-87 when a number of
examples circulated between botanists.  They were obviously known and used
in Germany (probably southern Germany) because a recipe for them appears in
Rumpolt's cookbook of 1581.  Yet they do not appear in Fuchs Herbal of 1545,
while maize and capsicum peppers do appear there.  I have no evidence, but I
think Nicholas Federmann may be to blame.

I fear you have been led astray by John Gerard and the historians who took
his statements at face value.

Bear




-----Original Message-----
From: Rosine <rosine at sybercom.net>
To: sca-cooks at ansteorra.org <sca-cooks at ansteorra.org>
Date: Monday, May 06, 2002 9:46 PM
Subject: [Sca-cooks] Potatoes, revisited


>   I just got into a small disagreement with a very charming man from the
>Netherlands and now I'm wondering if I was correct in my assertation that
it
>was sweet potatoes that came from South America to Europe and white
potatoes
>that came from North America... so I searched up my "saved messages" queue
>from this List and - I can't find the message that I was thinking of when I
>was talking with him. A visit to "Google message search" didn't help.
>   Please, if you remember the discussion (and especially if you saved the
>message with the period quotes), could you post again?
>
>Rosine
>
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