[Sca-cooks] Potatoes, revisited

[Stefan li Rous]

Rosine asked:
>    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?

Well Rosine, you were at least not completely right.

The white potato did not come from North America, although that is
sometimes the misconception. It came from South America. Peru.
perhaps? I think it is Peru that is scrambling to try to save
many of it's indigenous breeds of potatos before the farmers stop
planting them and start planting just the newer hybrids.

One of the best places to search for that kind of information is
probably in the Florilegium. In this case, in this file in the
FOOD-VEGETABLES section:
potatoes-msg      (80K) 10/13/00    Period white and sweet potato use. Recipes.

If the period quote you are looking for, given on this list, is not in
there, then please let me know. The date on that file is pretty old,
which means I've got another file here of info to get added to this
file.

The probably source of the sweet potato may be in this file as well,
but I can't remember for sure.

The Yam, sometimes confused with the sweet potato in the United
States if from Africa.

I'm sure Bear can give the rundown on these questions as well.

--
THLord Stefan li Rous    Barony of Bryn Gwlad    Kingdom of Ansteorra
   Mark S. Harris            Austin, Texas          stefan at texas.net
**** See Stefan's Florilegium files at:  http://www.florilegium.org ****