Musings on the Humble Potato (and its place in English food culture)
Bangers and mash with lashings of onion gravy; a sizzling rib of beef with roasties; fish and chips with, of course, plenty of salt and malt vinegar. Three classic British dishes with one ingredient in common - the humble spud!
Ah, the British potato! A starchy tuber of great variety and versatility, and a staple of our national diet for . . . . . . well, probably not quite as long as you'd imagine! Of course, most of us are aware of the potato's new world origins and, back in the day, every schoolboy could have told you that the potato was brought to these fair shores, along with tobacco, by gentleman, explorer and politician, the gallant Sir Walter Raleigh (well, that's if Elizabethan propaganda is to be believed!). As Raleigh was probably returning from from the newly created state of Virginia, where the potato is not native, it's now commonly accepted that the tuber Raleigh introduced to England (if any) was, in fact, the sweet potato. This, at least, goes some way to explain a number of curious Elizabethan recipes for candied potato! It seems more likely that, having been brought from the South Americas to the Iberian peninsula by the Spanish, propagation and use of the potato spread slowly eastward across Europe and, later, to the remainder of the Old World .
Although the potato was in relatively common usage throughout Spain, Portugal and Italy within fifty years of its introduction into Europe, the English remained stubbornly suspicious of this tuberous member of the nightshade family well into the 18th century (much later among the poor of London and southern of England). Why so, you may ask?
Well, several attempts were made to popularise the cultivation and consumption of potatoes over the centuries. As early as 1664 the Georgical (agricultural) Committee, a subcommittee of the fledgling Royal Society, advocated the cultivation of the potato "to provide against famine". It actively encouraged the Society's land owning members to plant the tuber and provided seed potatoes and instructions for cultivation, all to no avail. Our staples remained stubbornly those cereals we had grown for millennia - wheat, rye, barley and oats, in the form of pottages, breads, pastries and suet based puddings. Across the Irish Sea the potato had gained favour as a staple crop as far back as the early 17th century, encouraged by a climate that rendered the production of grain crops, other than oats, difficult to say the least. Yet in England this fibrous and nutritious root failed to gain acceptance, particularly among the "lower orders". Indeed, as late as the late 18th century, when poor town and country dwellers alike were subsisting on a diet of little more than white wheaten bread, small quantities of animal derived fats (butter, cheese and dripping) and sweet tea, the potato was still viewed by many working class English as food fit only for cattle and the Irish!
That's not to say that the potato didn't make an appearance at the tables of the English nobility, gentry and the merchant classes during the 17th and 18th centuries. Following it's initial introduction into the counties of Cheshire and Lancashire, presumably via the port of Liverpool, cultivation of the root for both animal and human consumption spread gradually outward across the nation. However, it was not until the mid-Victorian era, perhaps 300 years after its original introduction into Europe that the British nation, as a whole, finally came to accept and, indeed, relish the potato. And, boy, did we make up for lost time? Potatoes boiled or steamed, roasted or baked, mashed with butter and milk, and, of course chipped and fried!
So, where does this leave the good old spud in relation to our lost peasant food heritage? Would the potato have become a feature of English peasant and country cooking had the development of our countryside taken the slower trajectory of, say, France or Spain? . Well, ironically, it could be argued that, had our peasant food culture not been truncated by enforced land enclosures (the process by which, with the connivance of the British Parliament, most common land and open field systems were taken into the ownership of the ruling classes and landed gentry, and enclosed, rendering them absolute private property), the uptake of the potato as a staple crop of the poor would have occurred much sooner than it actually did. The potato, after all, unlike many cereal crops, lends itself to cultivation on a small scale, whilst returning relatively high yields. However, without these remaining scraps of common land, the rural poor were denied the means of raising livestock and growing vegetables which, coupled with the virtual inaccessibility of the countryside for foraging both food and fuel, led to severe rural deprivation and, often, destitution. Without the means to grow and cook food, habitual daily recipes that had been a central part of the lives of the English peasantry must have been lost in a matter of years. As these people were, for the most part, illiterate, recipes that had been handed down from generation to generation suddenly vanished.
It is my conjecture that, had the development of our rural cooking culture continued unabated, we would have seen not only the earlier inclusion of the potato into that culture in such a way that was more integrated than we see today (by which I mean there would have been many more recipes where the potato formed an integral part of the dish, for example Lancashire Hotpot, rather than just a side vegetable), but that we would also have retained our love of cereal based dishes, whether using whole grains for pottage and frumenty (our equivalents of risotto and paella, but made with barley and wheat), or milled grains for bread, pastries and suet based puddings.
Although the potato was in relatively common usage throughout Spain, Portugal and Italy within fifty years of its introduction into Europe, the English remained stubbornly suspicious of this tuberous member of the nightshade family well into the 18th century (much later among the poor of London and southern of England). Why so, you may ask?
Well, several attempts were made to popularise the cultivation and consumption of potatoes over the centuries. As early as 1664 the Georgical (agricultural) Committee, a subcommittee of the fledgling Royal Society, advocated the cultivation of the potato "to provide against famine". It actively encouraged the Society's land owning members to plant the tuber and provided seed potatoes and instructions for cultivation, all to no avail. Our staples remained stubbornly those cereals we had grown for millennia - wheat, rye, barley and oats, in the form of pottages, breads, pastries and suet based puddings. Across the Irish Sea the potato had gained favour as a staple crop as far back as the early 17th century, encouraged by a climate that rendered the production of grain crops, other than oats, difficult to say the least. Yet in England this fibrous and nutritious root failed to gain acceptance, particularly among the "lower orders". Indeed, as late as the late 18th century, when poor town and country dwellers alike were subsisting on a diet of little more than white wheaten bread, small quantities of animal derived fats (butter, cheese and dripping) and sweet tea, the potato was still viewed by many working class English as food fit only for cattle and the Irish!
That's not to say that the potato didn't make an appearance at the tables of the English nobility, gentry and the merchant classes during the 17th and 18th centuries. Following it's initial introduction into the counties of Cheshire and Lancashire, presumably via the port of Liverpool, cultivation of the root for both animal and human consumption spread gradually outward across the nation. However, it was not until the mid-Victorian era, perhaps 300 years after its original introduction into Europe that the British nation, as a whole, finally came to accept and, indeed, relish the potato. And, boy, did we make up for lost time? Potatoes boiled or steamed, roasted or baked, mashed with butter and milk, and, of course chipped and fried!
So, where does this leave the good old spud in relation to our lost peasant food heritage? Would the potato have become a feature of English peasant and country cooking had the development of our countryside taken the slower trajectory of, say, France or Spain? . Well, ironically, it could be argued that, had our peasant food culture not been truncated by enforced land enclosures (the process by which, with the connivance of the British Parliament, most common land and open field systems were taken into the ownership of the ruling classes and landed gentry, and enclosed, rendering them absolute private property), the uptake of the potato as a staple crop of the poor would have occurred much sooner than it actually did. The potato, after all, unlike many cereal crops, lends itself to cultivation on a small scale, whilst returning relatively high yields. However, without these remaining scraps of common land, the rural poor were denied the means of raising livestock and growing vegetables which, coupled with the virtual inaccessibility of the countryside for foraging both food and fuel, led to severe rural deprivation and, often, destitution. Without the means to grow and cook food, habitual daily recipes that had been a central part of the lives of the English peasantry must have been lost in a matter of years. As these people were, for the most part, illiterate, recipes that had been handed down from generation to generation suddenly vanished.
It is my conjecture that, had the development of our rural cooking culture continued unabated, we would have seen not only the earlier inclusion of the potato into that culture in such a way that was more integrated than we see today (by which I mean there would have been many more recipes where the potato formed an integral part of the dish, for example Lancashire Hotpot, rather than just a side vegetable), but that we would also have retained our love of cereal based dishes, whether using whole grains for pottage and frumenty (our equivalents of risotto and paella, but made with barley and wheat), or milled grains for bread, pastries and suet based puddings.
Perfect Parsley Mash
A modern potato masher, Grandma Dot's wooden masher and a potato ricer
Less a recipe and more my particular method for making, what I consider to be, perfect mashed potato:
Serves 4
6 medium to large King Edward potatoes, peeled and chopped in halves or thirds
full cream milk
1 or 2 good knobs of butter
a few grates of nutmeg
a handful of fresh flat leaf parsley, chopped
salt and freshly ground black pepper
Put the prepared potatoes in a saucepan, for preference large enough to accommodate them in a single layer, and cover with a good quantity of cold generously salted water. Put the saucepan on the stove over a high heat, bring the pan to the boil, then turn down the heat and simmer, lid on, for 15 minutes or until the potatoes are cooked and just beginning to break up on the outside. Once cooked, drain the potatoes into a colander and leave them to steam and dry out a little. Meanwhile, return the empty saucepan to a low heat and pour in some milk - enough to just cover the bottom of the pan - before adding the butter and some grates of nutmeg. As soon as the butter has melted, take the saucepan off the heat and, using a potato ricer, rice each potato into the pan. Finally, throw in the chopped parsley and beat all together with a wooden spoon, season to taste with salt and black pepper and beat once more. Perfect mash!
Haggis, neeps and tatties (parsley mash in this case)
