Central and South America. Some were
cultivated 8,000 years ago. Spanish explorers
brought one species, Solanum tuberosum,
from Peru or Colombia to Europe around
- Because it was hardy and easy to grow,
the potato was inexpensive and the poor were
its principal consumers. (An Irish peasant ate
5–10 pounds per day at the time of the 1845
blight.) It now leads all other vegetables in
worldwide production. More potatoes are
consumed in the United States than any other
vegetable, around a third of a pound/150 gm
per person per day.
The potato is a tuber, the tip of an
underground stem that swells with stored
starch and water and bears primordial buds,
the “eyes,” that generate the stem and roots of
a new plant. It is sometimes a little sweet,
with a slight but characteristic bitterness, and
has a mild earthy flavor from a compound (a
pyrazine) produced by soil microbes, but also
apparently within the tuber itself.