POTATO

21st December 2023

How the devil Luxury, with his fat rump

and potato finger,

tickles these together:

fry, lechery, fry.

THERSITES: Troilus & Cressida, Act 5, Scene 2

POTATO (Solanum tuberosum)

Potatoes occur twice in Shakespeare’s works: in Troilus and Cressida and in the Merry Wives of Windsor. Potatoes, Common and Sweet, were still exotic luxuries and both were associated with lust and aphrodisiacs. In a contemporary cookbook of 1594, the Good Huswifes Handmaide, there is a recipes for a ‘a tarte to provoke courage in either man or woman’ which includes Burr roots, Quinces, Potato root and Dates boiled in wine, into which 8 eggs, the brains of 3 or 4 Cock Sparrows, Sugar, Cinnamon, Mace and Ginger are added.

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.

Potatoes are so ubiquitous in many countries that we take them for granted. It would be difficult to image many Christmas dinners in modern Britain which would not feature Potatoes in some form. 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.

More Information

Foods of England: Good Huswifes Handmaide 1594

John Gerard, first edition 1597, A Herballe or General Historie of Plantes (accessed via Archive.org)

International Potato Centre, Peru: Visit Site

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