[Sca-cooks] Potatoes/Sweet Potatoes (was: Never ever work with a rennfaire...)

[Terry Decker]

Most potato recipes are for sweet potatoes.  The one that was given is
similar to a recipe for sweet potatoes from Fettiplace.  Sweet potatoes were
known from 1492 and were known to most of the people who sailed the
Caribbean.  They are mentioned as a food stuff by both Hawkins and Drake.

The first evidence for the consumption of white potatoes is in Spain in 1573
and probably represents an insignificant planting as no information about
the white potato appears in Carolus Clusius's Spanish Herbal.  Clusius
received his first potato in 1587 from a friend who had obtained one the
year previous from a Papal legation.  Clusius then provided samples to many
of the botanists in Northern Europe.  Gerard received his potato in 1586 by
another route.  It can be stated with near certainty, that the white potato
was unknown in Northern Europe before 1586.