How One Guy Made Europe Fall In Love With Potatoes

Today, the humble potato can be found in restaurants and dinner tables across the world -- but this wasn't always the case. In today's episode, Ben and Noel dive into the story of one spud-loving, potato-proselytizing man named Antoine-Augustin Parmentier, and his ambitious life's mission to get an entire continent onboard with the idea of an obscure, Peruvian tuber that would go on to fundamentally change the world.

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Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:00):
Ridiculous History is a production of I Heart Radio. Welcome

(00:27):
back to the show Ridiculous Historians. Thank you, as always
so much for tuning in. That's our super producer, the
one and only Max Williams. They called me Ben and
I gotta tell you. Out of all the carbs, all
the carbs in the world, potatoes are number one for me. Sorry,
beer potatoes, stick him in a stew, Taters, spuds, Uh,

(00:58):
just make up dirt munches, Tubers, tubers, there you go. Tubers.
Tubers actually refers to like what the thing that they
grow from, right, sort of like bulbs, sort of like
tulip bulbs. I think the things you plant to grow
potatoes are called tubers or it's it's it's like a
genre of of root of edible root, right yeah, yeah.

(01:20):
It's the underground part of a stem or a rhyme
that serves as a food reserve. It does bear buds
from which new plants can grow. Right, It's like when
you take a potato and you stick it, you can
you can actually grow potato from a potato, the like
you know when you actually when you leave a potato
out for too long, those tubers start to come out

(01:41):
almost like some sort of weird Cathulu esque creepers. I'm
no old, by the way, Yes, yes, your nol and
a potato is a typical tuber. It's a great example
of a delicious tuber. All you need is a little
bit of salt, some some butter, source of heat and
in imagination, and you can. You can take potatoes pretty far.

(02:03):
It's true, it's true, but a lot like other, you know,
earlier forms of of food stuffs that we now know
and enjoy, like the banana potatoes, weren't always the potatoes
we know and love today, were they? No, they weren't old.
I love that you're bringing this up. So this is
this is odd. This has happened a couple of times
in Europe. There are some uh, some specific types of

(02:26):
produce or even dishes that become closely associated with a
given country, But those fruits and vegetables or tubers in
this case, are not themselves native to the European continent.
You know, some people are surprised to learn that tomatoes
were not native to Italy and weren't around for a

(02:49):
long long time, And the same is true with Ireland
and potatoes. Are you implying the potatoes migrate, yes, Monty
python reference, but no, it's true. I mean potatoes, he can't.
You're inseparable from from the Irish culture almost like in
this cliche, sort of obnoxious, almost condescending, the idea of

(03:10):
of Irish Irish being sort of simple folk potato farmers,
like subsisting on very bland foods, and of course the
famous potato blight or the potato famine of Irish history
is also a huge part of of that country's identity.
But they're you're right, they're not native to um Ireland
at all. In fact that they're not native to anywhere

(03:30):
in Europe. They originally were domesticated in the Andes Mountains
in Peru, also in northwest Bolivia, and they were used
for food as far back as eight thousand b C.
We've got a great article from Mental Floss about the
history of potatoes. Highly recommend checking that one out. But
they didn't taste the same back then either. They were

(03:53):
oddly shaped, or at least oddly compared to the you know,
very typical oblong potato shape that we know and left today.
But they also tasted bitter, and you know how some
vegetables have a little bit of a bitter taste, and
then when you cook them that can kind of dissipate
a little bit. This is not the case. No amount
of preparation or cooking could get rid of that bitter taste.
And also some of them were toxic, and lamas had

(04:16):
a really great trick for making sure they didn't die
from eating these bitter potatoes. Right, yeah, yeah, that bitter
taste was you know, a little bit of poison, not
a ton, just a touch, just a touch of poison. Yeah.
Lava's would lick clay before they ate potatoes in the wild,
and the poisonous parts of these potatoes essentially would stick

(04:42):
with the clay particles and then it would travel safely
through the animals body. So people in the Andes noticed this,
and then they started dunking their potatoes in a mixture
they had made of clay and water. You know, this
wasn't actually hote cuisine, but it did make the potato

(05:04):
edible and a little more enjoyable. And we're on a
bit of a quest today to understand how the human
species got from lama impersonators in Peru, at least when
it comes to cuisine, all the way to the modern
day when potatoes are a worldwide phenomenon and they're especially

(05:24):
popular in Europe, because, as we're going to see, this
was not always the case. But like you said, no Peru,
that's where our story starts. This was a very important
food stuff for people in the Andes Mountains. This was
a staple product. And we know this went on for
centuries and centuries in that part of the world. But

(05:47):
the fact is, you guys, no one had seen a
potato in Europe. No European had seen a spud before
Spanish conquistadors invaded South America way back in what the
early Fires fifteen thirty and over through the Incan Empire Yepe.
And with that, like many things we see that to
start popping up in Europe usually come from some sort

(06:08):
of tragedy, traumatic cultural events, or decimation. So is the
case with the potato. I just want to add one
more little thing. There's a really great little tidbit in
the Mental Flaws article by Michelle deb Check that even today,
those uh slightly poisonous potatoes, you can still get them
at andy and markets and they're sold with like a

(06:30):
little digestion aid, a little packet of this digestion aiding
clay um kind of mixture. So though, that was pretty interesting,
and it just shows that, you know, even if it's poison,
tradition is is important. But you're right, Ben, Around the
mid fifteen thirties, the Incan Empire was overthrown by Spanish conquistadores,
and so came the spud, the noble spud to Europe

(06:53):
in the sixteenth century. But it was not met with
open arms, Ben, it was not met with open arms.
The Spa Nish brought the potato back from South America,
and at this point they kind of bread it or
cultivated it in such a way that it was totally edible.
You didn't have to, you know, mix it with dirt
or clay dustin people did that. The Spanish didn't help.

(07:15):
The Spanish did not. Now they were not about that life.
But here's the thing, and I love this socially. Those
tubers we were talking about, Um, well, this is a myth,
I think. But it's interesting cause you heard about a
lot of stuff that is easily debunked. The idea that
Europeans didn't like any um plants or or you know,
food stuff that weren't expressly mentioned in the Bible. Shout

(07:36):
out to the State for anybody who remembers the fantastic,
wildly underrated sketch show the State. There's this wonderful sketch
where they talk about whether or not penguins or in
the Bible. Uh, this this family and that's that's kind
of a descendant of this idea. This did happen, though,
this has been debunked in different cases, right, different specific cases.

(07:57):
But we do know that more conservative people of the
time time literally would say, well, I don't know, it's
not in the Bible. Is not in the Bible? Did
if it was in the Bible, it would have wrote
it down right, so but I would have ridded it down.
That is a pitch perfect sixteenth century Flemish accent, really wondering, well,
you know, I applaud you, um, but okay, so we

(08:19):
know this has been debunked, Like I think, what we're
tomatoes not mentioned the Bible, and there was like a
theory that that was when we talked about tomatoes, and
the idea that people thought they were poisoned too and
that they weren't mentioned in the Bible was a thing.
But anyway, there's there's lots of examples of that. But
another reason for suspicion around these edible underground rudy boys
or the fact that they were grown from these tuber

(08:42):
things that vaguely resembled the boils on the skin of lepers.
So yeah, here's the thing. We we know that there
there are a couple of other issues, right, like cabbage
didn't get a lot of shine, and a Bible cabbish
doesn't have an awesome cameo moment, but it was still

(09:04):
really popular tulips that that was also happening at the
same time that didn't seem to bother people. And you know,
when we're looking at the expansion of all these all
these new types of unseen fruit and vegetable or never
before seeing fruit and vegetable arriving in Europe from North

(09:25):
and South America, we know that people are dealing with
a lot of crazy things they haven't seen before, right,
and they're trying to compare them two things they already
are aware of. Check out our pineapple episode, because that's
that's a wild ride. So the other issue here is
that South American climates are not like the climates that

(09:48):
you will find in Western Europe, especially when you talk
about hours of daylight per day during winter and so on.
So when they take these buds, these tubers to Europe,
they see the potatoes grow leaves and flowers, and the
learned folks of the day are studying up on them.

(10:09):
But the tubers they create don't quite get to the
size of potatoes and peru because they, you know, they're
in a different climate. And so the Spanish started trying
to figure out where they could grow these, similar to
the way that the English were trying to figure out
how they could grow pineapples. And if you haven't listened

(10:31):
to that episode yet, do check it out. What a
weird people used to rent pineapples. It's it didn't happen
with potatoes. Now one start written in potatoes yet. But
well they weren't very pretty again, like I said, people
thought they resembled the kind of stunted, little nubby things
that would form on on the skin of lepers or
when their fingers would be have to be removed, etcetera

(10:53):
very very ghastly kind of stuff. I just want to
point out I had my mom did this like Christmas
in July thing because you know, or you know, COVID
relatively being somewhat dealt with enough to at least like,
hug your grandma. We hadn't seen our family, um, you know,
members in in a long time, even before covid um.
So we did a little Christmas in July thing and
I went, I couldn't notice that she had this massive

(11:13):
pineapple in this fruit ball that clearly was not for consumption,
was clearly just for decoration. And I mentioned to her that, hey,
you know, back in the day, this would have cost
you a pretty penny just to rent um. But no,
definitely not the case with potatoes. But they did start um.
Potatoes were prettier back then, though, weren't they been. They
like actually flowered and they would be studied by botanists.
These potato flowers. He's kind of like very um or

(11:37):
nate little blooms, right, yeah, yeah, Like I was saying,
the climate was such that they could have these leaves
and flowers. But again, the tubers themselves were not reaching
the size that you could find in South America. So
the Spanish did something that was pretty intelligent. They were
aware of the climate and they said, okay, we'll try

(11:58):
to grow potatoes somewhere else. We'll grow them on the
Canary Islands, which is kind of think of it like
the Goldilocks zone between the northern climate of Europe and
the more equatorial climate of South America. Still, when we
talk about the controversy, I think it's hard for a
lot of us in the modern day realize or to

(12:18):
think of potatoes as a controversial thing, because for many
of us, wherever you are in the world or most
most places in the world, potatoes are a common known,
very nod controversial thing, right nobody. It's not what you
know part by French. But it's not as if any
of us are gonna hop on to record ridiculous history.

(12:39):
And you guys asked me what I had to eat,
and I'll say, oh, I got a Patty Melt and
some hash browns. And then here Max go, oh, like
that's with holy water? Did you? Did you say the
sacraments above it? You know that that was the thing? Yeah?
You know what's not in the Bible? Right, Okay? Were

(13:00):
you okay with that? You had planted it as a
specific time to write some particularly on Good Friday, to
prevent it for my guests becoming evil again, those little
troopers are kind of creepy looking. I look at them
and I can't not think of like the eldritche you know,
gods or whatever, like the hundred hundred percent there's like

(13:21):
what do they call it called those been the sprouting
or fruited. Uh, you know members, I guess that come
out of It's the thing in the Last of Us Games,
good good, good stuff, good franchise. But here's the thing.
What we what we need now, Ben, what what history
needs now is a potato evangelists, someone to to come

(13:42):
and normalize potatoes and really, you know, sing its praises
of the humble potato. And we got that in the
form of Antoine Augustine Perimentier, who was like he could
consider him like the ultimate hype man for the potato.

(14:04):
He's a potato promoter, he's a potato proselytizer, he's a
spud spokesman, he's a he's a tater uh trumpeter. Uh.
We could get a different term for that one. We'll
fix it in post max fix that what I posted.

(14:25):
But now this dude. Uh. Antoine Augustine Permanentier was born
in seventeen thirty seven. Um. He went on to become
a pharmacist he was French, obviously, in the French army
during the Seven Years War. There's a really excellent article
from Atlas Obscure that also gives a wonderful rundown of
the history of the potato by Jim Clark. Highly recommend

(14:46):
shocking that out went out, and we're gonna pull some
information from that article as well today. But yeah, pharmacist
during the Seven Years War. Um he actually became a
prisoner of war, during which time the Prussians gave their
prisoners potatoes, and the French at the time, um, as
we've discussed, still viewed potatoes quite negatively. Yeah, yeah, which

(15:10):
is crazy because some of my favorite potato recipes are
French influence. Now. But anyway, this is the thing. So
imagine you're in prison in Prussia. Life stinks, right, and
you're this pharmacist parmenter and he's eating these potatoes in prison,
and he goes, these things are actually not bad, they're

(15:31):
not deadly, they're they're actually they're pretty great. Like I'm
thinking right now, just on their own seven out of ten,
and I can make it a nine partmentist thinking. He
is eventually released at the end of the war after
three years have passed and he can't stop thinking about
these potatoes. It's like it's weird they're on his mind.

(15:53):
He's been through a literal war, you guys, and people
are asking him about the war and how he was
a p O dup you in Prussia and he's like, yeah, yeah, yeah,
have you Have you heard of potatoes though, because like
I've the war. That's a five minute conversation. But I
have like two days. If you want to talk taters
with me. I do want to shout out. Rebecca Earle
a professor in the Department of History at the University

(16:15):
of Warwick. She wrote an awesome book called Feeding the
People The Politics of the Potato. We're gonna be pulling
some citations from her in a piece she wrote called
How Potatoes Conquered the World. I just wanted to shout out.
If you like books about very specific things like me,
then check out Dr Earl's Politics of the Potato. So, Ben,

(16:36):
you're asking me about the potato and I'm like, I
don't know. I heard it was of the devil, you know.
I don't trust it. I don't don't want to it
was poisonous um change my mind. Wait wait, so that's im.
I'm like, I got the table. I'm like, I got
the table with the sign. That's his potatoes are of
the devil change and that's Premier's job is to change

(16:59):
my mind. There are collective minds as a nation. How
does he do it? How does he do it? So
first off, he says, you know, study thyself. And he's like,
I pretty much just ate potatoes for three years and
I'm alive. I feel good. I feel pretty pro tator.
Uh that was a rough one. We stuck the landing Max.

(17:22):
Now Max doesn't approve of that one. So I think
I'm going to get a growing soundtrack for that one.
I earned it. Uh. So there's this historical novelist Katherine Dolores.
Katherine Dolores writes quite a bit about this and says
that it was typical of the time for people to

(17:45):
challenge these old ideas. So, no, you're the guy at
the table saying change my mind and put mine says
I am going to change your mind. I'm not just
gonna bore you with a bunch of science and a
bud to facts. I'm gonna do some flair. I'm gonna
have some pizzazz on this I'm gonna I'm gonna wow you.

(18:07):
We're gonna shock in all you in a war for
the hearts and minds of people when it comes to potatoes.
So at this time we have to mention this is
seventeen seventy two. His first step is to get the
French government and the medical community doctors on board, and
as Farmers Almanac reports, France had had a potato band

(18:31):
for a while. Did you see that? I mean really
they were just like, you know what, it's not enough
to just kind of malign the poor potato. Let's just
outright ban it, like schedule it like a drug or
something like that. What was their reasoning? Was it because
of the poison potential or was it because they just
just didn't like it? They thought it was it was low. Yeah,

(18:51):
I love the idea of a French p s A
from the seventeen hundreds, like oh your children eating potatoes,
and then all kinds of weird you know, like war
on drugs esque facts, which true stories, school children are
leaving school to dig to the ground with their bare hands,
all in the search for a spud, don't don't speaking

(19:15):
of which been that term spud actually comes from the
hole that you dig to make the to plant the potato.
That's the sput and also refers to like a short
blunt knife that might have been used to dig those
uh those holes for for planting potatoes. I was looking
at up on the fly. I didn't know. That's awesome, man,
thank you for the I love somato biology. We also
do know why, roughly why the French band the potato.

(19:38):
French Parliament banned them in seventeen because they believed that
this resemblance to leprosy. Right, the way the potato reminded
them of leprosy was therefore indictative, like was therefore going
to create leprosy and people that consumed it. So they
thought they were outlawing a vector for a disease. Isn't

(20:02):
it funny how so much stuff was based on just
sheer observational observation alone, based on no science. But we
have to remember, though, this was the beginning of the Enlightenment,
which is partly I think why Permans got a little traction,
because people were beginning to open up their minds to
not think that way right, to be more like, well,

(20:24):
you know, let's just give it a try. Um, let's
try some new things. Maybe looks can be deceiving, and
it turns out he was pretty successful in that in
that campaign. Yeah, and they were also we have to
remember they were driven by starvation as much as to like,
if you if you have people who are are experiencing
food insecurity, then of course some of those social taboos

(20:47):
are going to loosen up a bit. Yeah, So Parmentier
does this thing that is pretty clever. He first goes
to scientific institutions, specifically the Presation Faculty of Medicine, and then,
according to Katherine Dolores, what he's after is an official
statement that potatoes are not even good for you, but

(21:11):
not as dangerous as they have been believed to be.
So it's kind of like he said, it's kind of
like he's he's saying, look, potatoes are on the level
of a firearm, but they're not a nuclear bob, just
say that. And because people have pretty much everybody alive
at this point in France has been alive during some

(21:31):
period of food and security, and there have been a
recent harvest that failed in seventeen seventy, so there was
already a prize out for anybody who could who could,
you know, offer solutions to this recurrent problem with famine,
and that they were probably expecting stuff like a new

(21:52):
kind of planting technique or a new kind of irrigation system.
They weren't expecting the profit of potatoes to come through.
And he went hard in the paint. He published this
essay called Quree and the Newish and Vegetables that in
times of necessity he could substitute for ordinary food breath.
Who my goodness, these uh, these titles for these essays

(22:14):
back then, we're not it got the job done right
so absolutely that he could consider that his like potato treatise,
and he had sort of a three pronged approach to
gaining wide acceptance of the potato. First, he needed to
get the French governments and the medical community on board,

(22:35):
because again there was still a little bit of vagueness
around whether the potatoes were even safe. So uh, in
seventeen seventy two, um, after he published this treatise, he
started to circulate this among government officials that he was
tight with um and people in the medical community, so
they started to be more of a conversation around it. Next,

(22:55):
of course, is to you know, gotta sex them up
a little bit dressed that humble pot hato up in
a nice cocktail dress and send it out on the town.
So he did that, and he started to introduce potatoes
to Paris is uh sort of bougier high society types, right, yeah,
and this is an important step. So he gets some
of the big v I P names of the day,

(23:16):
Benjamin Franklin, Thomas Jefferson, noted chemist in France to come
to his dinners, which are these pretty high class affairs
centered on the humble potato. And just to give you
a sense of how profoundly potato centric this was, he

(23:38):
would have as many as twenty courses featuring potatoes. And
it seems that this is a cool story. So Noel,
max you guys like French fries, right, you're not against
the right what kind of what? What's your favorite French
fry type or what are some of your favorites? Maxico, First,

(23:58):
I need to think for a second. I mean, you
can never like be like the classic MacDonald's fries. I mean,
I don't eat fast food really ever, but your high
road high road now yes, yes, somewhat yeah, but I
mean they're just like, you know, the quintessential fries. I
mean they're over salted. There's virtually no potato to it.

(24:20):
It's just been deep fried. It's just a vessel for
something to be fried. And I think that makes them
pretty much amazing. I like a good home fry. I
like a potato wedge. Shout out to one of our
favorite local bars and restaurants, the Righteous Room. They do
a really really nice crispy on the outside, soft on
the inside, Serve it up with a little of that

(24:41):
salt and uh and a vinegar, a malt vinegar, and
that's an excellent potato. But you're right, Max, I do
think the French fry, or oftentimes the potato, it can
be just a flavor vector, not not a vector for
disease though, right right, dive actor for disease. Hey, I'll
tell you I had some I get this weird thing
with steak fries. Specifically, I don't trust them because they're

(25:05):
like they're well, they're mashed potatoes in disguise, you know,
like the big steak fries. But to teach their own,
the Righteous Room does kill it with the potato wedges.
Tell him, tell him we sent you. But the the
thing is, there's so many varieties of French fry. They
it's hard to believe they didn't really exist in the

(25:27):
US for a long time until or what would become
the US for a long time, North America and Canada
until Thomas Jefferson. This is not confirmed, but Thomas Jefferson
may have interacted with Parmentier been so inspired that he
brought back the idea for what we call the French
fry with him to Monticello and served it later at

(25:49):
a White House dinner. This comes to us from a
cool book called Potato, A History of the Propitious Esculent
by John Reader. Ben, do you have a preference for
a potato preparation? It can be a fry, it can
be a mash uh, you know, home hash brown. I'm
just interested. I almost sent you guys this picture over

(26:11):
the weekend. I don't know if you saw it, but
I cooked one of my favorite new potato recipes. It's
not it's new to me, you know what I mean.
It's the have you you've heard of fondant potatoes? Yes? Yeah?
Is that like a scalop potato? Ben? Yeah, yeah, exactly,
with cream and garlic and butter and all that. Well,

(26:31):
the way I do it without selling to Parmentier is
just this recipe that it takes a little bit of time,
but it is more than worth it. You can't you
do a cast iron thing? You got some time t
H y m E some butter. If you look at
pictures of it, you'll see what I'm talking about. Oh
I see now, they're almost like they look like a scalop.
They almost look like a sea scalop because of these

(26:52):
little like potato stacks. That looks amazing. Now I was
thinking more of a scalop potato um, which is uh,
I believe like inly sliced layers of potato layered with
cream and butter and garlic, and uh, it's absolutely My
mom makes it and made it for this Christmas in
July situation. But mashed potatoes were one of the any

(27:13):
of these could have potentially been on the table literally
at one of these dinners, one of these potatoes centric
multi course dinners. But mashed potatoes was obviously a hit
and in a favorite and there they they persevere to
this day as like a holiday staple. And I believe
in the the art of cookery. There is an eighteenth
century recipe book written by um the English author Hannah

(27:36):
glass um. This is believed to be the first ever
recipe for mashed potatoes, and really, honestly, outside of a
couple of little editions, this is pretty much the way
it's done today. Right then, Yeah, here's the idea. It's
one of those things where the approach is kind of like,
don't fix it if it's not broken. The art of
cookery just says the following. Boil your potatoes, peel them,

(27:59):
put them in a sauce pan, mash them well to
two pounds of potatoes, put a pint of milk, a
little salt, stir them well together, take care they don't
stick to the bottom. Then take a quarter of a
pound of butter, stir it in and serve it up.
Pretty simple, right, Yeah. I would personally probably add some
garlic to that, maybe a little heavy cream. I wouldn't

(28:21):
peel them. I wouldn't peel them. I likes red potatoes.
I like the skin on these red potatoes instead of
those big baked potatoes that I think is the quintessential
or rather baking potatoes that is the quintessential potato. I
think that we would have been thinking of in this
period as well. Right to a million percent, a million percent.
So this these dinners become quite the sensation and so okay,

(28:46):
Tier two of his three tiered plan as absolutely a success.
I mean, Jefferson even ended up keeping a copy of
that potato treatise in his presidential library at Monticello. He
got he got compromised. Big potato got to a big
potato got to him. And um even like royalty got
in on the mix, like King Louis the sixteenth, I believe,

(29:10):
uh and um Marie Antoinette um are believed to have
used potato flowers, right, these beautiful purple potato flowers um
as decorations for their clothes. Uh and like you know,
like lapel pins and and hat adornaments or whatever. So
now we're into phase three one and two smashing success.

(29:39):
Where where are we going for phase three? Ah? Yes,
this smashing or mashing success is only going to be
You're welcome, audible grown from Max. We're doing this. We're
doing this for you Max. So uh, this this stuff
is all well and good for the upper classes, right,
but if you want this to have a lasting impression,

(30:00):
and from Parmentier's perspective, if you want it to be
useful to people, then it has to be useful to
the common people. Who was that band who had that
song common people is starts to the pulp Yeah, holds up.
So this guy is like, you know, potatoes need to

(30:23):
be for the common people. Potatoes need to be something
that common people do or eat. So all his publicity
stunts aren't really getting the job done outside of the
upper crust, right, the upper crust of the fry social class.
So Parmentier tries something different, doesn't he know. He goes

(30:43):
to the king and asked for a favor. He does. Yeah,
he goes to the king, King Louis the sixteenth um
and requests a plot of land, a tract of land
at Sebelan uh and that is in seventeen one. And
the King, you know, having already and impressed with the
moxie of this uh, this pharmacists, of this pow this

(31:05):
potato evangelists, grants him this plot of land, which Parmentier
immediately turns into a potato patch. This is also this
land is located on the western edge of the Paris
metro area. I guess you could say, um. And then
he hired all of these heavily armed guards to kind

(31:25):
of make it a big, you know, sort of almost
like theatrical show of how important these potatoes are. Um,
and he thought that people would notice the guards and
assume that potatoes were some sort of really hot new commodity.
Uh and anything that's you know, being guarded so um assiduously.

(31:45):
To to borrow one of your favorite words, Ben would
be worth stealing. Right, Yeah, there it is. You create
the buzz by sort of faking demand until you make it.
You know, this is this is great, but there's even
goes this conspiracy goes this step further. This is the

(32:07):
coolest heist moment of the show. So imagine Noel Max
Fellow ridiculous historians listening along at home. Imagine that we
get together a hist crew. We're in France, and we
say they're guarding something secret. We're gonna bust it and
take it because we're the best thieves there are. And

(32:27):
so we all have our you know, it's a highst movie.
We all have our specialties. Noel, I know that you
have a special um proclivity for being a bagman, right bagman? Yeah,
I'm the bag man. So that's that's that's that's who
I am. Um. I carry a bag typically every day,
So that's why, So we won't spend too much time
on everybody else's specialties. But our highst crew goes in

(32:49):
and we pull off our heist. We discover the secret
it's potatoes, and somehow, somehow we get away. Yeah, we
didn't really train that much even for this. You know,
we're not particularly adept heist people. You know, you don't
even know what we're looking for. I don't even know
what a bagman does. I just say on them batman
because I like to carry a bag, and then people
make fun of me and call it a man first.

(33:10):
But I'm a batman, thank you very much. But yet
we get in and out. It's almost like these guards
are letting us get away with these potatoes. Why would
they do that, though, Ben, Why would they do that
because their boss told him too. You know how heist
movies have the stereotypical twist right in the third act
or whatever, this is the third act twist. Parmentier has
set up this heavily guarded situation and then he's told

(33:34):
the guards, look, if any thieves come by, let him
get away with the potatoes. This has gotta be great
for the potatoes reputation. Now, in my head, he's like
a Hollywood producer and he's smoking a cigar. It's something
he's like, there's gonna be great for the potatoes public image. Here. Look,
if any if anybody comes up and they try to
bribe you, uh, just give them some potatoes. Take the bribe,

(33:58):
no matter how big it is, the out of how small,
whatever they could. They don't have to be money. If
they come up to you with like a shoe, a
handful of dart, you'll give them up a potato. You
gotta wonder did did they Did they fire some half
asked warning shots like no, come back here you no, no,

(34:18):
what do you do? Bring back that potato? No? Yeah,
they had to have at least given put put up
some sort of faux fight or else. I think the
roosts would have been a little too transparent, right, a
little too obvious. Right, You have to because you know
these thieves have presumably worked on their idea. It feels

(34:39):
kind of it's kind of a deflation, isn't it. If
you feel like, guys, we have we have these matching
dark outfits. We worked on our like silent hand signals,
and you just let us in. At least give me
a good beating or something like that, you know, and
then let me go. But no, it's true, and this
this this publicity stunt, even though isn't apparent to those

(35:01):
involved that that's what it was. That is what it was,
and it worked. By the way, there's a really really
cool article in The Farmer's Almanac also about the strange
history of potatoes and the man who made them popular
by Amber canuckle Um. Really good stuff on the Farmer's
Almanac dot com. Never really realized what a good resource
that was, but check that one out for sure. So

(35:23):
he really has single handedly with his three tier approach,
changed the hearts and minds of the of both the
gentry and the lower class uh in favor of the potato. Yeah, yep.
And this potato effect turned out to be a very
good thing for French agriculture. The potato fundamentally changed the

(35:46):
productivity of these farms. It had more reliable yields than wheat,
and you could grow it in the same fields that
wheat grows in as long as the wheat crop was
follow It was easy to grow in a lot of
different varieties of soil. It was easy to farm. And
this like other people saw what was happening. Other world

(36:09):
leaders caught on pretty quick. Catherine the Great over in Russia,
King Adolph over in Sweeten. They get on board the
potato trade. And you'll read you'll read varying estimates, but
one of the ones that I think is is the
most optimistic comes. You know, it's quoted in this Atlas
Obscura article, and they'll tell you that there are a

(36:32):
couple of historians who believe that potatoes may have doubled
Europe's food supply in terms of just pure calories, meaning
that they would finally be able to break the cycle
of famine. I'm interested now, I want to see what
the calorie contents of a potato actually is, because that's
a really good point. I mean, we know now, you know,

(36:52):
potatoes are something to be avoided oftentimes because they're so carbi,
you know, and they're so calorically dense. But back then,
when food scarcity was much more of an issue, you
wanted stuff that was calorically dense, that was really really important.
So it looks like uh, one hundred and sixty three
calories per a medium potato, which actually isn't that insane um,

(37:15):
but again it is the carbs. It has thirty seven
grams of carbohydrates, which is not necessarily directly related to
two calories. But I don't know, I've always been a
little bit too unclear as to how carbs work. While
cutting out carbs is different than cutting calories. Yeah, well
it's it's interesting because potatoes do have a lot of

(37:38):
other stuff going on, you know, like it's it's not
just carbs, right, They can be a nutritious food, but
you know, yeah, right, Well, they also contain all the
essential amino acids you need to build proteins. They are
lacking some stuff like over time. If you it would

(37:59):
offer what experts call uh complete protein if you hate
over ten potatoes a day, which is a lot even
for me, but you would get deficiencies in certain vitamins
like vitamin B, twelve, vitamin A. People are built to
have a slightly varied diet, right, That's just how they evolved.
But still the potatoes solves a lot of problems, and

(38:23):
it gets kind of a bad rap, like you said, Noel,
with the with the anti carb crowd. You know, I know,
we we might have some listeners right now who are
mad at us a little bit because they're like, today's
the day. Today is the day I am going to
get fries. It's okay, We're with you. It's gonna be
worth it. Everything in moderation will be okay. There's one

(38:46):
big elephant in the room. There's a there's a big
potato in the room that we have to address. Uh.
Fellow fans of history, you'll realize that around the late
seventeen hundreds there was some thing else happening in France,
something equally revolutionary, well more revolutionary, because it's it's literally

(39:08):
it's the French Revolution. Yeah. If you have the inspirational
tones of the score of the original cast recording of
Les Miserabla going in your mind, um, that's because we're
talking about the French Revolution. Uh. And it was the
French Revolution that potentially could have put a damper on
Permanentier's potato revolution, you know, more important revolution, one would argue,

(39:31):
sort of took precedent, but it didn't really last. Yeah. Yeah,
So this was all happening during the lead up to
this tremendous upending of French civilization society. Famine was still everywhere.
Potatoes were useful, as farmers all the Night points out
to help combat starvation, especially in northern France in but

(39:56):
of course people in other parts of France were still
still thought potatoes were suss. As we would say nowadays.
Parmentier when he published that paper we mentioned, it was
ignored because this basically because this paper was published in
seventeen eighty nine, right before the beginning of the revolution,

(40:17):
and the king himself knew that Parmentier and potatoes got
a bit of a raw deal there. The King eventually said,
France will not forget you found food for the poor.
And think about this. It was really unpopular during the
French revolutional royalty, you know, it was really connected with royalty,

(40:38):
right now, Parmentier. No, that's a really good point. We
we we sort of, I don't want to, I hope
we didn't sound like we were saying that this treatise
immediately caused the potato to explode, as you know, he
did that that bit with like the fake potato heist
or whatever, and that did start to get folks interested
on some level. But you're right, it was still so

(41:00):
sated with the wealthy. I mean, after all, they were
stealing potatoes from the wealthy rather than like cultivating themselves
but the whole idea was that it would become this
like staple food, and it did ultimately. It wasn't though,
until sevent that potatoes really really did start to take

(41:24):
off in France, and that was there was a really
important moment in that year when Madam Mary Go published
her Potato cookbook, and that then began to associate the
potato as the food for the revolutionaries, because after all,
Madam America was also associated with the French Revolution. The

(41:46):
official title of her book was La Cuisine Republican or
The Female Republican Cook, so very much promoting these potatoes
as the food of the common people, but all so
acknowledging that common people like variety as well. You don't
just want to eat boiled potatoes every day. You want
to cook it in a bunch of different ways. And

(42:07):
that is one thing that makes the potato great is
you really can cook it in lots of different ways.
Boil and mash them, stick them in a stew, make
them into a fam dance, you know, layer them with
cream and butter and cheese, you know, I mean, there's
so many ways you can do a potato. Shred them
straight up, fry them twice, bake, put them around stuff,
you know what I mean. Throw them in the air

(42:29):
like confetti, little shreds hash brown and try to catch
them in your mouth. I think that's more technique than
a dish. But you see what we're saying. They're versatile definitely,
and you know, if we're getting functional here for for
a moment, I do want to say I learned recently.
I have a mandolin. You know that you used to
shred the potatoes to make. By the way, wash your
hands on those. Use the little plastic nub that it

(42:51):
comes with. Don't just think you can do it with
your hand, because you will get slices on your hand.
Those things are don't joke. Yeah, go more slowly than
you think you should. Agreed, But here's the thing. When
you're making hash browns, the key is to rinse the
potato shrugs so you get that starch off and that's
what causes them to fry up much more nice and
cris believe. You can put them in a bowl of

(43:12):
water twenty minutes or so. Yeah, it's perfect and you
can see the water changed too, And then you squeeze
them with like paper towels or something to get that
excess of moisture out. Yeah, I haven't figured out what
to do with the starch water, but I'm convinced I can.
I can figure out something. It won't just be wastewater anyway.
You're right, uh, and we you can tell we think
a lot about potatoes because we're big fans. Also, the

(43:37):
person you just mentioned, Madam Mary Go just to be
completely clear, when we say that she's a Republican, we're
talking about it in the French revolutionary Yeah, right, the
republic very different thing than the way it would be
used in the United States today. But after this becomes

(43:58):
accepted as the food for the revolutionaries, by the next year,
tons of people are growing potatoes because they're a quick,
efficient way to feed the forces of the rebellion during
long sieges. So in the end, Parmontier survives the revolution

(44:19):
and he keeps his head, which not everybody does spoiler alert,
and he is accepted back into society because he's thought
of more's the potato guy. Then he is as a
friend of the king. The revolutionaries also recognized his expertise
and they thought, you know, this guy can feed a
lot of people. He was right about potatoes. Let's just

(44:41):
if we let him keep his head, let's see what
else he comes up with. His job security increased during
the rule of Napoleon because Napoleon was all about making
France self sufficient during the war across Europe. By this point,
Parmontier's work and had expanded past potato does He gets
a lot of credit for potatoes today, and rightly so

(45:03):
for popularizing them, But that wasn't all he was into.
He was he wanted to know more about corn. He
saw a lot of potential in beat sugar. I wanted
to ask you, uh Nold Max beat sugar. Have you
guys ever used that in anything? Is it a sweetener?
You know? It feels like it might have been the
B side if his if his food research were an album.

(45:25):
I feel like beat sugar is like track number two
or three on the B side. Oh yeah, you can
get it like in in bags like you would sugar
in the raw. It kind of looks like it's branded
the same way, So you definitely could use beat sugar
to sweeten things for baking. I do know that beats
are part of the reason that like impossible burgers bleed

(45:45):
quote unquote, that's true. So there's beat sugar in those
as well, But no, I haven't messed with that. Although
I'm a huge fan of beats, of roasting beats, and
that's one thing I growing up only knew the slimy,
gelatinous beats that's slid out of a kid, which is
not what they are at all. And a nice roasted

(46:06):
beat with some goat cheese and maybe some grilled pears
or something like that over some rugula, that is what's up.
Get some dried figs in there too, you know what
I mean. Class it up. Don't be afraid impress whoever
you're dating. All I'm saying is anyone out there that
thinks they think beats are gross, Try taking a golden
beat and just drizzling it with literally you leave the
skin on, drizzling with olive oil, little salt, wrap it

(46:27):
in a tinfoil bacon in the oven at three fifty
for like, I don't know, twenty minutes maybe, and then
you just wipe the skin off with a paper towel
or a kitchen rag and it just comes right off.
And then you slice them, and I swear they're the
most I don't know, how would you describe describe it
as earthy, kind of grassy, but also sweets and um
really really nice in us. Yeah, and you can do
these in slices as well. Like roasted beats way to go.

(46:52):
You can make that your own. I would say I
typically do it for like thirty five minutes or so forty,
just because I like him super crispy. Throw some time
on there, you know what I mean. You can throw
some uh a little bit of salt and pepper anyway, Yes,
Parmentier was really into sugar. We think beats get a
bad name. No, parsnips are pretty good too, although I

(47:14):
don't think Parmentier worked with him. Parsnips have had a
hard time with it. I've never cooked them. I've tried
them a couple of times, and I've always found that
I've undercooked them and that they're very tough, and I
think you really have to get them just right. Yeah, yeah,
there's a there's a way to roast them, but they
can be they could be a little bit finicky. We
can't wait to hear more of your specific food recipes
from history. But like we said, Napoleon is digging Parmentier.

(47:38):
He's like the Napoleon is thinking, all right, this guy
more potato guy than he is a royalist, so he'll
help us with this. He'll help us beat sugar and corn.
In fact, Napoleon is enough of a fan of Parmentier
that eventually he gives him the Legion of Hotter. That's
sort of like the presidential Medal of Freedom or something. Yeah,

(48:00):
it's it's similar. The Legion of Honor is the highest
order of merit you can get in France, whether you
are military or a civilian. It was established in eighteen
o two by Napoleon himself. Very cool. Well, I think,
well deserved. I don't know, there's really nothing particularly problematic
in this dude's story, right, which I thought was kind

(48:22):
of interesting, because usually there's some agenda or like, even
if something takes off, it's usually being done for some
like weird nefarious purpose. But I think this guy just
realized again he came from suffering this, This whole experience
came from him being jailed, you know, or imprisoned by
the Prussians during the war and him realizing that potatoes
were getting a bad rap, and then he actually just

(48:43):
really liked them. And if you read his letters and
his writings about potatoes, you could really tell the guy
just really liked the potato and wanted everyone else too
as well, and saw the potential for it in a
world where food wasn't for everybody, or at least abundance
of food wasn't for everybody. You know, it was reserved
for the upper classes. And I don't think he approved

(49:05):
of approved of that. He wanted to, you know, have
everyone be fed and believe that everyone deserves to have
a full belly. So I think that's pretty awesome. Yeah, agreed.
And you know, after he was granted this legion of honor,
he passed away peacefully in eighteen thirteen. He was seventy
six years old, buried in Paris, and if you go
there even today, you will see that his plot, his

(49:29):
grave is surrounded by potato plants, and some people when
they go to visit, they leave potato on his grave
as as a way of saying thank you. What I
think is amazing about this is the more we looked
into this, well, the more I was convinced this guy
was like a earlier version of Norman Borlog. I had

(49:51):
this series I did a while ago, years and years ago,
animated series called Stuff of Genius, which was all about
inventors and the inventions that change the world. And Norman
Borlog is a guy who was like Parmon Tier. He
was an agronomous and he is often called the father
of the Green Revolution. He went on to save over

(50:14):
like a billion people from starvation, and Parmentier was doing
a very similar thing with the potato. He he has
a legacy that remains with us today. There he's like,
you know, I think it was Atlas Obscura that called
him like the Johnny apple seed of the tato. Yeah, no,
it's absolutely accurate. It was. It was that atics Obscure article. Uh, specifically,

(50:37):
Jim Clark made that excellent comparison. I love that and
it's totally true. Um. He is to this day remembered
in you know, the culinary tradition of French cooking. There
are quite a few dishes that are named after him.
One of my favorite soups in the whole world potato
and leek soup, a version of that called pottage Parmentier,

(50:57):
which is exactly just that. You can find a recipe
or pormontage partier on the Farmer's Almanac. Just look for
potato leak soup recipe on the Farmer's Almanac and will
give you a little bit of that history. Uh. There's
also like a version of this served cold. It's called
not not not for me, not into a cold soup.
But you know, I'm not a not a gaspacho guy,

(51:20):
but I love a good hot potato and leak soup.
And there's another one um called hot cheese parmentier that's
a lot like a shepherd's pie, you know, with like
different ground beef and vegetables and corn and stuff of course,
you know, topped with mashed potatoes and hopefully some nice
um crisped cheese. And this this is where we find

(51:42):
ourselves today. According to the United Nations, the potato has
grown in virtually every country that can do so in
some in some form or fashion and some scale. And
that makes it the world's fourth most important food crop.
So go you potato, and thay you Peru. Oh and
speaking of Peru, ben I didn't realize the Peruvians also

(52:05):
had like a method for freeze drying potatoes to keep
themselves like in you know, in potatoes, in case there
was a blight or a crop shortage. And those freeze
dried potato flakes are kind of the like early version
of what we know today is instant mashed potatoes. Yeah,
I remember reading that. That's pretty that's pretty amazing as well.

(52:27):
And that just goes to show you how long or
how long people in Prue had been working with this
native produce. No, although I know what's the end of
our story and this episode is has been going a
little bit long, there is one last myth I believe
we absolutely must bust or we must at least address,

(52:49):
which is I. I went to Belgium a while back.
You remember that I was. I was in Brussels for
a minute, and one of the one of the things
that my friends told me as we were landing on
the plane is, you know, don't call them French fries.
You can ask for palem free the fried potatoes, but

(53:10):
do not call them French fries. Because you see, folks
both France and Belgium claim to be the inventors of
what we call French fries in the US and h
people are still going back and forth because now it's
become a matter of national pride. Just save fries. Just
say palem free in France or in Belgium. Be very

(53:34):
careful with it. Yeah, Fried's just really means like fries
um and palem is the French word for potato, so
it's true. Uh, And honestly, French fries it just sounds
like a dumb American alliterative kind of like, uh, you know,
way of referring to something because we don't feel like
learning the language or what was that thing where people
are like, oh, now, so lame. Also, I love the idea.

(54:00):
U Um. I'd love to hear about the way American
cuisine is depicted or the way US cuisine is depicted
in other parts of the world. I was in a
grocery store one time that had an American isle and
it was just junk food and peanut butter and one
like very sugary cereal. That's hilarious. That's almost like a

(54:20):
disc isle. I love that, Yeah, decile. It was a
distract from the grocery store. And I think we don't
know it's probably from the movie pulp fiction, or probably
possibly from from travels or whatever. But uh. In Belgium,
they don't put ketchup on their French fries. It's all
about mayonnaise. And I have adopted that and I think
it's awesome. Um. But I know some people are very

(54:41):
triggered by mayonnaise, but it's good fries and mayonnaise, quick good.
You know what I'll do. It's terrible for your help,
but no question. And cheese sauce. Yeah, I'm not gonna
say no to it. Especially it was potato wedges at
our local establishment. Dude, cheese dip and wedges at the
Righteous Room is like the off menu, I them. It's
like the secret menu at in an out burger. You

(55:03):
gotta you gotta try if you come to if you
come to our our our neighborhood. Highly recommend yes, yes,
highly recommended. Uh. And thank you to Parmentier for popularizing
the potato because you know, in my head that means
that he is in some way responsible for all of

(55:24):
the potato recipes that you're produced after that point, you know,
So thank you Parmenter, the potato man. You know another
thing I didn't think about. We may be alluded to
it a little bit, but potatoes keep for quite a
long time, just out, you know what I mean, like
out in a bowl in a dish on your on
your kitchen counter, before they start to get gross, or

(55:44):
like grow the even when they do grow, those little
eyes or those little tubers. They're still absolutely usable. I
have some red potatoes that I've been meaning to cook
that I think I'm gonna follow the lead of our
of our subject today and uh and and freak you
see up something for lunch. Because they're also very versatile
and a good kind of base for using stuff in
your fridge that maybe you need to use. Uh make

(56:07):
a little uh, you know, like a little stir fry
with some potatoes and some vegetables. Maybe add an egg
in there, you know, I think I'm gonna I'm gonna
do that. Yeah. Nice. Yeah, they're hardy to they're they're
durable and tough to kill. In fact, during the Great Depression, Uh,
some of my ancestors were able to survive because they
found a frozen potato patch. Which is a strange and

(56:29):
inspiring of tragic story. But let's not end on a
note like that. Off air ridiculous historians. Noel uh and
Max and I were talking and Max, there's something that
you've had on your mind since we've started this episode.
Is that true? That is correct? There was this map
that came out you guys know those maps that it's

(56:51):
like the most googled blank by state and stuff like that.
So there's this one from Zippia. Zippia, I've never used
the website for. It's a job recruiting website called what
job each state Google's more than any other, and it
is one of the most enjoyable maps I've ever read
in my entire life. So, like, a few of them
are pretty normal, like Wisconsin is beer brewer, Minnesota's lumberjack,

(57:16):
and Nevada is bus driver. Okay, but some of them
get a little strange. So California is lion tamer um,
New York is professional cuddler, and my personal favorite word
one North Carolina is pirate. Wow. Okay, yes, I'm sorry.
These are aspirational jobs. These are just what job each

(57:38):
state Google's more than any other of this. Yeah, so
I could argue you could argue aspirational jobs, right, But
the reason why I actually no, I want to keep
that because the reason I bring this up is we
gotta go to America's frozen wetland, which is of course Ohio,
which if you've ever been to that state, you will
understand why I say that their number one on most

(58:00):
Google job is just potato. That's what aspirational. Indeed, so
I think that's what Noel Gallagher called his brother Liam.
I believe you called him a potato, which is also
a very underappreciated emoji. Just a potato, you know, A
big fan. I also love if we're talking British insults. First,

(58:23):
well done, Max, thank you for that. I mean, I'm
going to be bothered by that for a while. But
for British insults, which always impressed me. I was hanging
out in pont City Market pre pandemic, which is where
our office is based in Atlanta, Georgia, and I heard
a British person called someone else a shape as an

(58:44):
insult s h ape. They said, you've been shape, which
is like good, good insult for reasons I don't understand,
and I think you need the accent to pull it off.
Did you know that the if I'm not mistaken, Michael Myers,
the character in the Halloween movies, is referred to you

(59:04):
as the shape. I wish I had learned more about
the context of that situation. It's just hard to stop
people and say, like, excuse me, sir, I am not British,
but I do respect the insults employed by your culture.
Last thing, another British chism with shape is an expression
for dancing is throwing shapes. So I would I would

(59:28):
say in that context. You know, like I said, it's
tough to go in there and say like, excuse me,
I'm not British, I know what's going on. But I'd
love to learn a little more about this context because
I want to see if I can pull off shape
as an insult. So what is your deal, sir? Uh?
You know what? Before yeah, before we go, I do
have to ask Max, what is the job people are

(59:49):
googling the most in Georgia. I'm glad you're asked, because
if you live in Atlanta, this makes sense. It is tripper. Wow.
Did not see that coming. Neither did I, but it should.
It tracts if anyone's interested in some more like Atlanta
centric kind of jokes and memes. There's a couple of
really good Instagram accounts. I believe one is just called

(01:00:11):
Atlanta Memes or something like that. Um, you can meme
like a local, you can't. Yeah, it didn't see it
come in the way. France didn't see the potato on
the way. But that's how history works. Uh, No, thank
you for this. What what a cool ride. Any any
excuse to talk about food is a good episode for me.
I'd love to hear everybody's epic potato related recipes or moments. Uh.

(01:00:36):
And thank you, of course to the one and only
Max Williams. Ben. Are those potato fondas are they just
like like cookie cutter like cut out like a scallop?
Or are they layered? Because I'm looking at the pictures
of them? Yeah? Yeah, So what you what I like
to do is take a take a pretty good medium
sized potato, You peel it, you chop the the ends off,
and then you usually if it's a medium potato, you

(01:00:59):
can get about two of lenders out of it. So
you cut that in half, and then you take whichever
half is the most even it's usually where you made
the cut in the middle, uh, and then you just
you PLoP them down with some uh with oil. Initially
get us a cast iron pan, and you finish them
in the oven. So it's a whole thing. But if
you want like eight of those little cylinders, just get

(01:01:22):
four potatoes. Got it? Got it? And like Ben said,
let us know your favorite potato recipes. We're still working
on getting that sort of down. You don't think it'd
be that difficult, but I promise it'll happen. I'm in
the meantime, Please reach out to us as individuals on Instagram.
I am at how Now Noel Brown, and you can
find me on Instagram. In a burst of creativity, I've

(01:01:43):
named myself at Ben Bull and you can also find
our super producer Max Williams at Potato Fan and Holy
Cow Ban. You just send a test the email to
ridiculous at I heart media dot com and it appears
to have worked. Well, that's good news. Uh, maybe maybe
I'll get it as well. Well, we'll see, We'll see,

(01:02:04):
but it does look like our email addresses up and running.
Thanks of course to Casey Pegram. Thanks to Alex Williams,
who composed this banging track it's probably playing lightly right now, definitely,
And thanks to you Ben, and thanks to you Noel.
Thanks to one of our favorite potatoes, Jonathan Strickland ak

(01:02:25):
the question. We'll see you next time, folks. For more
podcasts for my Heart Radio, visit the I heart Radio app,
Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen to your favorite shows.