Cooking potatoes

Potatoes cooked in various ways.

The potato, source of carbohydrates, protein and vitamin C, easy to cultivate and cook, became a staple food ; its nutritional value may however greatly vary in accordance with the manner of cooking.

Used for about 8 000 years, cooked in the coals or steamed, boiled, grilled, sauteed, fried, the potato is eaten around the world as a main dish, to accompany other foods or acts as ingredient in the composition of omelets, stews, etc.. We also use derivatives as thickeners (starch, for example).

Used by poor people, the potato is also used in gastronomic menus. It occurs at different times of the meal, from aperitif to coffee liqueur and coffee through the soup, the entry, main dish and dessert.

This cuisine is traditionally based on fresh tuber, but increasingly, the share of potato industry increases, becoming predominant, especially in Western countries. In the United States, the share of fresh potatoes represented, in 2007, only one third of the total consumption^[1].

In 1771, this cuisine was varied:

I will not describe the various ways to prepare them, uses them each according to his taste. I will only say, that crushes them in a sort of cylinder, with a pestle, or after having boiled or dried, eaten cooked, hand alone or with bread, meat, cheese, the bread, which we'll talk, we make the soup, it is used as that of wheat they are fried with butter, they are roasted in the ashes, they are eaten in salads. A famous physician, provides a book that salad or potatoes with vinegar, is the most effective remedy against this epidemic dysentery, which is accompanied by strong putrid^[2].

but the use of potato, as food in France, did not really widespread until the nineteenth century to the end of which Alexandre Dumas still felt the need to affirm the safety:

The potato is actually a food and healthy food, easy and inexpensive. His finishing has this enjoyable and beneficial for the working class of workers that requires almost no care or expense. The eagerness with which we see the children eating potatoes cooked in the ashes and find it well, proves that they agree to all the constitutions^[3].

References

1. ^ (English) Potato production & consumption, Foodreference.com.
2. ^ (French) Samuel Engel, Traité de la nature, de la culture, et de l'utilité des pommes de terre par un ami des hommes, Antoine Chapuis, Lausanne, 1771, 82 pages, pp. 50, 60 to 67.
3. ^ (French) Alexandre Dumas, Grand dictionnaire de cuisine,Alphonse Lemerre, Paris, 1873.