What is common to French fries, masala dosa, vada pao, shepherd’s pie, wafers and Swiss rostis — other than that they are all quite delicious? The potato, you said? Well of course it is!
For a plant that is almost 80 percent water, the potato has done very well for itself, becoming a part of practically every cuisine of the world. It’s as integral to a McDonald’s Happy Meal as it is to the masala dosa or aloo tikki. In fact it is difficult to imagine Indian cooking without potato in it!
So the following may come as a bit of a surprise to you. Though potatoes have been a food crop for thousands of years, they came to India only about 300 years back. Potato or patata or papa as it is called in Spanish, is a native of the Andes area in South America and used to grow wild in southern Peru till it was domesticated there between 8000BC and 5000 BC. When the Spaniards invaded Peru in the 16th century, they came across this vegetable and took it back home with them. Once the potato stepped out of the New World (the Americas), it never looked back. Since that time the root vegetable has travelled really far and wide in the world and beyond.
It reached the shores of India twice in its history — first in the 17th century when the Dutch came to India, and the second time in the 18th century, when the British invaded India and set up base in Bengal. This eastern Indian state was the first state to welcome Solanum tuberosum (Latin and scientific name of potato) to its cuisine. By the 1860s, potatoes became an essential part of Bengali cooking. Even today, potato-based dishes like potato bharta and aloo posto are an important part of the Bengali cuisine. Back in the day of the British Raj, the vegetable travelled to the rest of India and became a must have for many Indians of different cultures.
Just as in India, the potato was very popular in Europe during the time (and still is); maybe because it was easy and handy to grow and very rich in energy-giving carbohydrates and was a vegetable that even the poor could afford. Nutritionally potatoes are quite rich in starch and packed with Vitamins B and C but low in proteins.
This seemingly plain vegetable played an important part in history. Academics say that potato ‘fuelled’ the industrial revolution in Europe (18th-19th century) when there was a huge demand for cheap, energy-rich, non-cereal foods. Potatoes went on to become a source of essential nutrition around the world. Its consumption was so huge in Ireland that when a fungus destroyed the potato crop in Ireland in 1845, the death toll of the Irish Potato Famine was around 1 million.
Even today potatoes are the staple food of countries in the South, Central America and Europe. After rice, wheat and maize, potato is the largest food crop of the world and have 4, 000 varieties growing all over the world. So adaptable is this vegetable that it can grow anywhere, literally; even in space! In October 1995 the potato became the first vegetable to be grown in space! The idea behind the experiment was to see which food crop would work best in case astronauts have to grow their own food when they go on long duration space missions.
Talk about making progress; from the Andes mountain to outer space — the potato has come a long way indeed!
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