Autumn is creeping in. The days grow shorter, leaves scatter the ground and kass Jelli is moving closer to the stove. The harvest is gathered and when better to look at the history of Estonia’s favourite root vegetable? According to the database DAFNE (Data Food Networking) the only Europeans who eat more potatoes than the Estonians (188 grams per day) are the Latvians (274 grams) and Lithuanians (234 grams).
The potato was introduced from South America to Spain in 1565. The Flemish botanist Clusius (1526 –1609) who helped to create one of the earliest European botanical gardens at Leyden, heralds the grand beginnings of the career of our potato when, in 1587, he tells that the Prefect of Mons received some “Taratouffli” (“small truffles”) from a friend of the Papal Legate in Belgium. The potato reached the German-speaking world a year later but widespread adoption as a food crop took a long time because of a need to adapt a plant grown in the Andes to the temperate climates of Europe.
It took 150 years before varieties suited to long summer days began to appear. The potato was, however, easy to plant, required minimal attention, matured quickly and gave big yields and so began to gain acceptance. It was also hardier than other staple foodstuffs – for many farmers the problem was not so much whether a cereal crop would fail but when. A community that could fall back on potatoes was much less liable to famine and, in 1664; they were “a sure and steady remedy” for food shortages in Ireland. Over-reliance on the potato would later lead to disaster for the Irish but in the 18th century the crop was a lifesaver.
New varieties arrived at a crucial time when, in the 1770s, famine in Europe was widespread. The English economist Adam Smith wrote in The wealth of nations(1776) that “the food produced by a field of potatoes is not inferior in quantity to that produced by a field of rice, and much superior to what is produced by a field of wheat.” Smith also noted that the price of potatoes had, in three-four decades, halved as their cultivation moved from the garden to the field. He also thought that potatoes were responsible for the impressive physiques of the labourers and prostitutes of London (“the strongest men and the most beautiful women perhaps in the British dominions”) and contrasted them to his stunted fellow Scots whose main diet was oatmeal.
European governments promoted potato cultivation enthusiastically but prejudice persisted and not without reason. The potato belongs to the Solanaceae family of flowering plants some of which are poisonous. Solanaceae (also known as “the nightshade family”) includes belladonna (deadly nightshade), capsicum (paprika, chile pepper), tobacco, tomato, petunia, aubergine and mandrake. French farmers remained suspicious despite the widely reported fact that they were eaten at Versailles and that Marie Antionette (1755-93) wore dresses with potato flower embroidery. Some would not feed potatoes to their pigs for fear of bad meat. The Burgundians invented a fancy new name - pomme de terre (apple of the earth) - but they also banned the potato on the grounds that it caused leprosy. Pommes frites (“fries”, now gobbled all over the world in McDonalds) would not appear on French menus until the 19th century. When Frederick the Great of Prussia (1712-86) ordered his subjects to grow potatoes he was asked “what are they to us? The things have neither smell or taste, not even the dogs will eat them.”
In the 1760’s Anne-Robert-Jacques Turgot, Baron de Laune (1727–81), governor of Limoges, tried, like the King of France, to lead by example and dispel the belief that potatoes were poisonous by eating them in public. Turgot, an enlightened man, was opposed to serfdom and sympathized with the physiocrats (from the Greek physis kratein – “let nature rule”) who believed that the wealth of nations was derived from the land and agriculture. Labour and commerce, said the physiocrats, should be free from regulation (as opposed to mercantilists who held that the regulation of trade and manufacture generated wealth). A version of physiocrat philosophy would be central to the ideas of the 19th century Estonian “Awakeners” Jannsen and Jakobson and to Jaan Tõnisson, all of who saw a nation of owner-occupied small farms as an ideal basis for society.
But the 18th century Estonian speaking communities of the Estland and Livland provinces could not benefit from this – the idea that serfs should be free was anathema to both the Russian overlords and their Baltic German henchmen. In 1776 the Free Economic Society of St Petersburg essay prize topic was “the advantages and disadvantages of serfdom” and, in 1778, the best that August Hupel (1737 1819), the well-meaning pastor of Põltsamaa, could ask was “Is there no way to improve the condition of the Livland peasant without making him free and without diminishing the income of his lord.”
The potato itself was more democratic. It became Europe’s food reserve during the Napoleonic Wars and then a staple crop: it arrived in the Russian empire in 19th where it was called the “devil’s apple” and believed to cause cholera. The Estonians of the empire were no less suspicious of it than the French, Germans or Russians but potatoes soon became indispensable and were, says cook Silvia Kalvik, baked in the threshing barn oven. By 1900 boiled potatoes, meat and sauce was a common Estonian lunch.
The potato became the original “convenience food” – energy-rich, nutritious, easy to grow on small plots, cheap to buy and ready to cook without expensive processing. Increased potato consumption helped to reduce diseases such as scurvy and measles, led to higher birth rates and a European population explosion. Nowadays, Asia consumes almost half of the world's potatoes but its huge population means that consumption per person is modest. The heartiest potato eaters remain Europeans. So, next time you sit down to your meat and potatoes, raise your glass to your old pal. Bon appetit! Head isu!
First appeared in September, in Estonian, in the weekly Maaleht
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