Origin of the Potato

Pacific Seventh-day Adventist Publishing Association · Oakland, California · Jun 10, 1875

Origin of the Potato.

It would be hard for people in our day to get on without potatoes. The dinner-table would seem very bare without them. But they have been in general use only about a hundred years. The Journal of Chemistry says: It seems scarcely credible that only one hundred years have elapsed since the general introduction of this now well-known and universally-cultivated esculent into Europe. But such is the fact, and it has been proposed to hold a jubilee in Germany this year (1874), in honor of the potato. When the Spaniards conquered Peru in the sixteenth century they carried some potatoes and sent them to the pope. The new plant was cultivated a little in Spain, Italy, Burgundy and the Netherlands, and from a certain resemblance to the truffle, an esculent fungus growing in the earth, the Italians gave them the name of Tartuff or Taratufoei, whence the Germans derived their word Kartoffel. The French called them "Apples of the earth," Pommes de terre, while in Austra and portions of Germany the equivalent expression Erd-apfel is used.

John Hawkins first introduced them into England in 1565; Walter Raleigh brought them there in 1584, and, finally, Admiral Drake in 1586. The latter sent some to a friend to plant, with the remark that the fruit was excellent and nutritious, so that it would be very useful in Europe. His friend actually planted the tubers, and they grew nicely. But when the seed balls were ripe, he took these instead of the tubers, and fried them in butter, and sprinkled sugar and cinnamon over them, and placed them before some company as a great rarity. Of course the ball tasted disgustingly, and the assembly concluded that the fruit would not ripen in Europe. The gardener pulled up the plants and burned them. A gentleman who chanced to be present stepped on one of the baked potatoes as it lay in the ashes, when it broke open, and he noticed that it was as white as snow, and mealy, and had such an agreeable smell that he tasted it and found it very palatable. The new vegetable was thus rescued, but for a century after it was only cultivated in his garden, and in 1600 the Queen of England made, the remark in her house-book that a pound of potatoes cost two shillings (about fifty cents).