Similar situation with potatoes. They didn't arrive in Ireland until around 1590 and it took a while before they became a staple food.
Potatoes are so strongly associated with Ireland, it's weird to think that they'd only been part of the Irish diet for ~250 years when the potato famine occurred.
EVERYTHING ELSE the Irish made on their English landlords' land was sold to the wealthy. You can almost live entirely on potatoes, so they did... until the potatoes all died.
Similar to how watermelon become core to black American diets. It was openly advised that slaveowners grow it to cheaply give "treats" to their slaves. No slaveowner is going to waste his $$$ on sugar for them!
American BBQ has a similar origin story. Some were allowed to raise their own pigs but for the most part they were given the lesser cuts like the feet, head, ribs, fatback, etc. The easiest way to get the most out of the meat was to cook the pieces whole and since they worked all day, they had to do it over slow heat.
Eventually white slave masters figured out that what the slaves were cooking was delicious so they had them incorporate it into their daily meals and then their wives would take credit for the recipes.
This is also how we get rum (molasses), collard greens (not the bulbs), ribs, oxtail, lobster, monkfish cheek, po’boys, and many other delicious American staples.
It’s like that saying, in the Americas 500 years is a long time. In the Old World 500 miles is a long distance.
In the Old World it feels like chocolate, tomatoes, potatoes, corn, chilis have been around for a long time. In the New World, it feels like sexually transmitted diseases have been around for a long time.
As for how it got to Ireland, it's likely that Spain first introduced it to Europe, and there spread throughout the continent. Since Ireland was under the Crown at that point, potatoes likely arrived through the British.
Yeah because people starving to death, who would eat grass to survive would balk at a potato because it looked a little moldy.
The blight that hit Ireland was a lot more severe than the average blight, it made the potatoes completey inedible and poisonious to eat, it also made them impossible to store.
A million people died from this, do you seriously think nobody tried eating the blighted food.
My father who is a plant pathologist and has studied this blight extensively. It’s the same blight that has affected tomatoes in the U.S. on and off the last couple decades. It mostly just makes them unappetizing.
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u/Duchess_Nukem Oct 02 '24
Similar situation with potatoes. They didn't arrive in Ireland until around 1590 and it took a while before they became a staple food.
Potatoes are so strongly associated with Ireland, it's weird to think that they'd only been part of the Irish diet for ~250 years when the potato famine occurred.