Quiz - When were potatoes introduced to Poland?

[gardenmoma]

A little culinary expose' about potatoes from one of my favorite horticultural / botanical sites, "Wayne's World" waynesword.palomar.edu/vege1.htmPotatoes are an excellent low sodium source of complex carbohydrates. One average-sized baked potato is only about 100 dieter's calories (kilocalories), unless of course it is piled with butter and sour cream. Potatoes are used for all sorts of delicious foods, including French fries, mashed potatoes, potato pancakes, hash browns and potato chips. In Poland, a vodka that is almost 200 proof (nearly 100 percent ethanol) is made from potatoes.

Quiz question: When were the potatoes we rely so heavily upon introduced to Poland? Extra credit : By whom were they introduced?

[nancy]

Everything I know about potatoes in Poland, I learned from Jaga

culture.polishsite.us/smfood.html

culture.polishsite.us/articles/art299fr.htm

[gardenmoma]

It is hard to believe but potatoes (kartofle, ziemniaki) that are the base of Polish cuisine now - were not known in Europe before Columbus found America!

from Jaga's article.

How true! But when and how did the potato reach Poland

[suzanne]

GM,
I don't know the exact answer to the question of when the potato reached Poland, but I will take a wild guess: early to mid 19th century.

[piwo]

I don't know when exactly, but they were in Prussia in the 1770's, and part of Prussia was northern Poland......

[Jaga]

Nancy,

thanks for advertising my article. I wrote it a long time ago and almost forgot what was it in it. Gardenmoma - good question.
Here is a proper link to the article:
culture.polishsite.us/articles/art299.html

By the way, French did not want to cultivate the potatoes, the French government has to use some special incentives to force people to grow it. But I am not sure how it reached Poland really

[piwo]

By the way, French did not want to cultivate the potatoes, the French government has to use some special incentives to force people to grow it.

Oddly enough, neither did the Russians, since it grew "under the ground" and thought to be evil. Now they and the Poles produce the most in the world.

[Pawian]

piwo said:

Now they and the Poles produce the most in the world.

Not only produce, but eat them too. And make vodka from them.

[piwo]

pawian said:

piwo said:

Now they and the Poles produce the most in the world.

Not only produce, but eat them too. And make vodka from them.

Yes, I have a bottle and a half in my liquor cabinet. Chopin is what I'm drinking right now. We jokingly say that our favorite type of "taters" are strait from the bottle!

na zdrowia!!

[Jaga]

There is a very good article about potatoes history in Polish:
tomek.koszarek.webpark.pl/texty/textz.htm

I remember reading it in the past and again a couple of days ago. It seems that the potatoe was treated for a long time just as a flower and it was introduced in Poland on a massive scale by Saxon kings.

[gardenmoma]

The source Jaga cites above is written in Polish and seems to be saying almost the same as mine...did one copy from the other or arrive at the same conclusions independantly?

From the English translation of Old Polish Traditions in the Kitchen and at the Table by Maria Lemnis and Henryk Vitry

"Yes, a cookbook, only slightly different, because this one is in the form of a tale where typical Polish recipes are interwoven with a briefly outlines history of Polish culinary customs."

Here is the scoop on potatoes. It sounds very much like the Polish version that Jaga cited above…did one source borrow from the other?

"Potatoes appeared in Poland for the first time during the reign of John III Sobieski following his famous victory over the Turks beleaguering Vienna (1683)…Potatoes became acclimatized…during the reign of Augustus III (1733 +). This monarch invited German to settle on Polish royal estates who planted potatoes and popularized them among Polish peasants…Thus, potatoes were brought into Polish kitchens "from above" during the reign of John III, and "from below" during the reign of his successors, so that at the end of the reign of August III, potatoes were known everywhere in Poland."