[Sca-cooks] musings on nightshade

[Terry Decker]

> Alan Davidson mentions different dates.  The Spanish first encountered 
> them in Colombia in
> 1537 and called them "truffles".

Gonzalo Jiminez de Quesada was the leader of the first expedition (1536) 
into the Colombian highlands and is often credited with discovering the 
potato.  The 1537 date roughly conicides with the establishment of a Spanish 
presence in Quito.  De Quesada was joined by two other expeditions, those of 
Sebastian de Benalcazar and Nikolaus Federmann (in the employ of the 
Welsers)  The three returned to Spain in 1539 and de Benalcazar was awarded 
governorship of the region.  Davidson and I don't mention different dates, 
we are dating different occurences in the same time frame.

>The potato was introduced to Spain in the 1550's.

The first printed reference to white potatoes is in Pedro Creca de Leon's 
"Chronica del Peru" (1553).  Some authorities believe Creca actually 
introduced potatoes in the late 1540's.  Others speculate on later 
introduction.  The first evidence of cultivation in Spain is in 1573 when 
the they appear in a record of provisions purchased for the Hospital de la 
Sangre in Seville.  Potatoes do not appear in Carolus Clusius' Spanish 
Herbal of 1576.

And also
> to Italy, but the variety introduced had climatic requirements that Spain 
> and Italy could not
> meet and this variety was small, watery and somewhat bitter, and therefore 
> unappealing.

Probably true, but I'd like to know the source.  The Chilean potato was 
better adapted for a temperate climate, but would not have been available 
before about 1541 at the earliest.  There is a debate about precisely when 
Chilean potatoes came to Europe and whether or not they might have been the 
source of the potato blight.

He also
> says, "It is generally accepted that potatoes were introduced to the 
> British Isles (including
> Ireland) during the 1590's."

Generally accepted, don't mean it is necessarily so.  However, Johnna was 
able to provide me with a reference to a 1606 land lease in County Down for 
growing flax and potatoes.  Presumably in 1663, the Royal Society urged that 
potatoes be grown as famine food, so cultivation may not have been 
widespread.

He goes on to relate that Protestants refused to plant potatoes
> and one reason was that they weren't mentioned in the Bible.  Irish 
> Catholics got around this
> by "sprinkling their seed potatoes with holy water and planting them on 
> Good Friday."

Source?

>
> Davidson goes on to say that Gerard appears to have "muddled" potatoes 
> with another American tuber
> called "openauk".
>
> Huette

This is a debated point.  How you muddle potatoes with groundnuts when 
neither has been described in the scientific literature is something of a 
mystery to me, but I will assume it can happen.

Gerard refers to the plants as "potatoes of Virginia" and there were no 
potatoes in cultivation in North America prior to the 18th Century.
Openauk is commonly considered to be Apios americana, the American 
groundnut, which was growing in Virginia at the time.  You will find it 
mentioned in Thomas Hariot's "A Briefe and True Report of the New Found Land 
in Virginia" (1588).  It may be that the plants Gerard received in 1586 were 
groundnuts, but they might also be South American potatoes.

The problem is the samples were brought to England in 1586 by the fleet that 
rescued the Roanoke colonists (the first colony, the second colony of 1587 
is the one that disappeared).  The fleet, under the command of Francis 
Drake, had been engaged in looting the Spanish and had siezed and sacked 
Cartagena, Colombia during which stay, he reprovisioned his ships.  Drake 
then sailed northward to Florida and along the North American coast to 
Virginia before striking for home.  With more ships than men to sail them, 
Drake was quite willing to turn several over to the colonists to sail them 
home.  The potatoes Gerard received could have been South American potatoes 
taken in the sack of Cartagena and delivered by one of the Virginia 
colonists.

In any event, the key player in the introduction of the potato to Northern 
Europe is Carolus Clusius, who received his first sample in 1587 and 
disseminated samples to other botanists across Northern Europe.  The record 
of how and where he got his sample is recorded in his 1601 herbal, "I 
received the first authentic information about this plant from Phillipus de 
Sivry, Dn. De Walhain and the Prefect of the City of Mons in Hannonia, of 
the Belgians, who sent two tuber of it, with its fruit, to me in Vienna, 
Austria, at the beginning of the year 1587; and in the following year, a 
drawing of the branch with a flower. He wrote that he had received it the 
preceeding year from a certain employee of the Pontifical Legation in 
Belgium. .
"The Italians do not know where they were first produced. Certain it is, 
however, that they were obtained either from Spain or from America. It is a 
great wonder to me that, when it was so comman and frequent in the Italian 
settlements (so they say), that they feast upon these tubers, cooked with 
the flesh of mutton, in the same manner as upon turnips and carrots, they 
give themselves the advantage of such nourishment, and allow news of the 
plant to reach us in such an off-hand way. Now, indeed, in many gardens in 
Germany it is quite common because it is very fruitful."

Bear



> --- Terry Decker <t.d.decker at worldnet.att.net> wrote:
>
>
>> White potatoes are just late coming to the party and weren't as 
>> appreciated
>> as the sweet potato.  They may have arrived as early as 1539.  The first
>> reference to them being used in Europe is in Seville in the 1570's.  They
>> don't arrive in England until 1586 and Northern Europe until 1587 as
>> botanical specimens and most references to them are as botanical 
>> specimens.
>> As a crop, the earliest adopters appear to be the Irish around the end of
>> the 16th Century and it is the Irish that bring the white potato to North
>> America in 1719.  There are references to them being planted in various
>> parts of Europe in the 17th Century, probably as a hedge against invasion
>> and grain failures, but general use isn't documentable until the mid-18th
>> Century.  One speculation is the more temperately adapted Chilean potato 
>> was
>> introduced at that time.
>>
>> Bear
>>
>> >
>> > So my job is dull.  I was thinking about the animosity of Europeans to 
>> > the
>> > New World nightshades (you know, peppers, potatos, tomatos) and 
>> > realized
>> > that the Europeans who first started eating them were also the ones who
>> > were eating eggplant.  The only edible Old World nightshade.  Thoughts?
>> > Or am I really that bored at work?
>> >
>> > Morgana
>>
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