Chips as Aphrodisiacs?
Potatoes & Eyngoes
5th December 2023
Seona Anderson
Falstaff, the liar, womaniser, entertainer, cheat asks for the heavens to open and rain down aphrodisiacs on his head. In the Merry Wives of Windsor he is waiting for another man’s wife in the forest of Windsor Park and naming the most potent love aids he can call on.
“My doe with the black scut! Let the sky rain potatoes, let it thunder to the tune of “Greensleeves,” hail kissing-comfits, and snow eryngoes; let there come a tempest of provocation, I will shelter me here.” (FALSTAFF: Merry Wives of Windsor, Act 5, Scene 5).
It would be hard to find a more unseductive vegetable than the Potato today but in Shakespeare’s world Potatoes were recent, exotic imports and associated with lust. Common Potatoes and Sweet Potatoes are native to South and Tropical America where they were first domesticated. Potatoes made their way to Britain via the Spanish and English trade routes from the Americas and in the past 400 years have become an essential element of the diet in many parts of the world. Two types of Potato were known in Shakespeare’s England. The Sweet Potato (Ipomoea batatas) a member of the Bindweed (Convolvulaceae) Family and the Common Potato (Solanum tuberosum) of the Nightshade (Solanaceae) Family. They are distinct and unrelated species. Confusingly John Gerard, a contemporary botanist, calls our Sweet Potato the Common Potato, and our Common Potato the Virginia or American Potato.
It is our Sweet Potato for which Gerard lists a number of preparation techniques. “These roots may serve as a ground or foundation whereon the cunning Confectioner or Sugar Baker may work and frame many comfortable delicate Conserves and restorative sweetmeats. They are used to be eaten roasted in ashes. Some when they be so roasted infuse and sop them in wine: and others to give them greater grace in eating, do boil them with prunes and so eat them: likewise others dress them (being first roasted) with oil, vinegar and salt, every man according to his own taste and liking.”
Gerard goes on to say “notwithstanding howsoever they be dressed, they comfort, nourish, and strengthen the body, vehemently procuring bodily lust.” The Virginian or American Potato (our Common Potato) he states has the pleasant taste and virtues of the Sweet Potato, “being likewise a food, as also a meat for pleasure, equal in goodness and wholesomeness to the same, being either roasted in the embers, or boiled and eaten with oil, vinegar and pepper, or dressed in some other way by the hand of a skilful Cook.” Falstaff doesn’t make it clear which of the Potatoes of Desire he would like to appear.
Potatoes are so ubiquitous in many countries that we take them for granted. There are several thousand cultivated varieties of Potatoes in the world which can be susceptible to the Potato Blight, a fungal infection caused by Phytophthora infestans, the same disease which caused the Potato Famines in 19th century Ireland. Ensuring the survival of a range of genetic variations and the conservation of wild relatives is an important element of protecting a crop on which we have come to rely. The International Potato Centre in Peru conserves the genetic diversity of around 5000 landrace cultivars of Potato.
If we don’t recognise Potato as an exotic aphrodisiac most of us would at least recognise it as a food. The same is probably not true for the Eryngo. Eryngoes are the candied roots of the Sea Holly (Eryngium maritimum). Eryngiums grow wild on the coast but they are also also attractive garden plants. Gerard has lots to tell us about Eryngoes and how to make syrups and confits. He also outlines why Falstaff might be asking for a snow storm of Eryngoes before he met his intended lover.
“the roots condited or preserved with sugar as hereafter followeth, are exceeding good to be given to old and aged people that are consumed and withered with age, and which want natural moisture: they are also good for other sorts of people that have no delight or appetite to venery, nourishing and restoring the aged, and amending the defects of nature in the younger.”
Colchester in Essex was a centre of candied eringo root from at least the 17th century starting with Robert Buxton and then his apprentice Samuel Great. Candied Eringos were a famous product of Colchester and presented to important and royal visitors such as Princess Charlotte on her way to her marriage with George III in the early 18th century. Eryngoes were used in a variety of recipes and medicinal products but they have almost entirely lost this association in the modern world.
Falstaff’s aphrodisiac references are unfamiliar to most modern audiences but what aphrodisiacs would a 2023 Falstaff ask to fall from the sky?
More Information
BSBI Plant Atlas: Eryngium maritimum
Crop Wild Relatives: Visit Site
Foods of England: Eringo
The International Potato Centre, Peru: Visit Site
John Gerard (1597 first edition): The Herball, or General Historie of Plants (accessed via 1636 edition on archive.org)
Mersea Museum: Mr Great, Kemps Farm, Eryngo Production
Oxford Plants 400: Eryngium
