Don't buy this hoping to find 101 exciting new recipes for potatoes.
'From the Andes in the 16th century to fish and chips, the story of how a vegetable changed history', the cover blurb reads. It should say 'changed Western history', to be more precise. Apart from one short chapter on the potato's beginnings in the mountains of the Andes, it is more concerned with its history as it was transplanted to England, Ireland, France and the United States.
It is difficult to believe that potatoes - which many still consider the natural accompaniment for meat as in 'meat and . . .' - were greeted with such suspicion when first introduced. The Andeans liked the taste and versatility of the spud, and took advantage of its ability to thrive in a harsh climate.
One might expect it to have been just as well appreciated when introduced to France and England in the late 16th century.
Until then and throughout the 17th and 18th centuries, wheat and other grain crops failed regularly, and starvation was a constant threat. The potato would have been a hardy back-up crop, but was looked upon with great distrust: by some it was thought to be poisonous, by others a food created by the devil. The rich thought it was fit only for the poor, and the poor greeted it with suspicion because their animals rejected it as feed.
Social snobbery played a prominent part in the slow acceptance of the potato. In England, 'The Better Sort of People', as one chapter is called, refused to touch it, but briefly considered legislation to force it upon the poor.