RootsChat.Com
Ireland (Historical Counties) => Ireland => Topic started by: Keith Sherwood on Wednesday 16 February 05 09:15 GMT (UK)
-
I have just been reading "The Great Potato Famine", by James S. Donnelly, pub.2001, and am astounded to hear that "the average adult male of the labourer, cottier or smallholder class consumed as much as a stone (14lb) of potatoes per day" before the onset of the effects of the famine in 1845.
It says they supplemented this food with milk and occasionally fish, but what I want to know is, how did they cook and eat this vast quantity of spuds each day. Did they bake them or boil them and mash them... Did they enjoy sitting down to the next meal, realising it was potatoes again...?
Obviously, the account of what happened next in this tragedy of the Irish nation is a painful and sobering read, but is essential to any understanding of Irish history and emigration, etc. post 1845.
Keith
-
Hi Keith
I wish you could have tasted my Grannies cooking ,she cooked tattie bread to die for(made with potatoes)Broth ,that I can never get to taste the same.
Someone out there must have more recipes!
Irish cooking best in the world
My g-Grandfathers use to take a hand of soda bread and buttermilk out to the fields for lunch
As for understanding the Irish, I feel that it took a great nation of people not only to stay and try to survive but to up root your whole family in the hope that you might (just) find a better life....... all this took so much courage.............
As for me .....potatoes.....well I must have so many in my genes.....no wonder Iam not that keen on them
-
Hi, Stevenson,
You're starting to make my mouth water...!
It's just when you read a statistic like that (the 14lb per day), and lift up a 2.5kg. bag of potatoes at the supermarket and try to imagine how anybody managed to eat almost 3 of those each and every day, the bounds of belief are somewhat stretched...
There must be some surviving recipes of how they served up the potato prior to 1845, surely...
Keith
-
hi Keith
My g-grandmother use to put mashed potatoes in the porridge with salt and it was so thick she apparently cut it into thick slices as the men were going out the door to the fields........YUCK!..... I do not like porridge either...not surprised
But Iam sure that someone has lovely meals to tell you about
-
Hi again, Stevenson,
Would the tales you tell about your grand-parents have been around the end of the 19th, beginning of the 20thC.?
In the book I have just read there are many photos taken in the 1890's that the author seems quite happy to use as illustrations of what was happening 50 years before. No cameras then, I suppose.
But someone must have written down those potato recipes of at least 160 years ago...
Keith
-
hi me again
I have nothing written down but you are right in your time scale.
Anything that was eaten seems to have been passed down by word of mouth or memory.
I have lots of letters from the Boar,1st and 2nd world wars, that just keep saying 'how they can smell mother's cooking' as they write.(it doesn't bear thinking of what they were going through whilst they were writting) but......... those potatoes kept them going.....wars were won...thanks to the potatoe.
As to pre-1880 I would think .that again .food and how to cook it was passed down through the generations by word of mouth......unless someone out there can come up with old ideas new ways to cook......that even M&S could take on
-
info on the potatoe trouble !!
http://www.people.virginia.edu/~eas5e/Irish/Famine.html
-
Thanks, Graceland,
I hope you enjoyed eavesdropping on our fascinating potato chat!
And I'll have a good browse through all those links on the site you suggest.
Keith
-
wow sorry was it private in here i did not see a sign saying do not enter ;D
WOOPS A Dasiy !!! ;D ;D ;D ;D
-
Now, Graceland,
You know there's no hiding place on Rootschat... Only joking about the eavesdropping, too. I've had a fascinating time listening to Stevenson talking about her great-grandparents' versatility with the humble spud...
Keith.
-
;D Oh that ok then !! ;D ;D ;D
-
Now now nothing is secret on roots
Just phoned Belfast..... Great Aunt Lizzie is cross with me taking to a fisherman with a net and I should not talk to strangers and what would he want with her recipes anyway...and I didn't tell him about sarah and the poridge.?.......eh yes.....I have had a verbal slap on the wrist....big one and told to leave my net in the boat and get home... ahh
But I got Potatoe Apple cake
pastry
Salad
stew
bread
Champ(this one I forgot yum yum)
coddle (and this yum yum)
fish pie
I bet someone will have more
-
keith
forgot one a drop of the hard stuff
perhaps they used 12lb to make it and used the rest to eat
-
I think when you are used to a diet of heavily processed food, or a very varied diet, it is hard to conceive of eating so much of one food, but many cultures have and still do this. I'm thinking of some asian countries where every meal is lots of rice and a little bit of something with it. One of my asian friends used to measure how hungry she was by rice bowls ("I'm really hungry today, I could eat three bowls of rice" etc), and some of the asian students at a hostel I was at used to cook up a huge amount of rice and then share the contents of one tin of something like abalone between 4 or 5 to go with it.
On a more personal note, I never used to be interested much in potatoes until I lived in Scotland - something about the cold winters, and needing heavy carbohydrate meals, and suddenly I'm eating far more potatoes, and enjoying them much more too.
-
I agree with you Corinne,
A diet of rice sounds yuck to me... but...my family have days of just rice and something or just veg.
I feel we are all more cosmopolitan these days and there are so many lovely meals that come from all over the world
This day and age we are very lucky to have so much choice not everyone is(or was) so lucky
Three bowls of rice against 14lb of spuds, I think rice would be easier to consume
-
Oh, you are making me both hungry and homesick speaking of tatie and soda bread.
Keith, the Irish have limitless imagination when it comes to the humble spud. I was reared on the dishes that Stevenson lists.
My mother used to make the most scrumptious potato pie with a crisp golden crust on top.
I have never been able to get my soda and potato bread to taste as good as it did in Ireland but I'm a dab hand at the Champ - yummy!
Darcy
-
Thanks for those thoughts, Corinne, and the comparison with those who eat/ate rice as their staple diet.
But I think Stevenson's suggestion that 12lb of potatoes a day went towards producing a drop of the hard stuff (was it called poteen?), with only 2lb of potatoes actually consumed as food does make it sound almost believable.
Tongue in cheek, I trust, as the reality of what was actually happening in those stark years probably had a different explanation...
Keith
-
Darcy...
next time you make champ I am coming round for some.. all this talk of good Irish grub is making me want to book a flight ...now ..today...!!!
having lovely dreams and my pillow can't take anymore
Help.....!!!!!!!!!
Keith....
Yes it was poteen ...and the tongue was in cheek
There must be some historian out there who could tell us more ........(please)
You have started something here, I have now become very intrested in what they actually cooked...in 1840.....
But I do believe now that another casualty of the Irish Famine was Irish cuisine.......somone please please please please revive it........ I need help....!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
DESPERATE
-
Have just been in communication with an aunt of mine who was married to Uncle Jimmie, an Irishman, for over 50 years. She says that her mother-in-law told her:
"...potatoes as main meal were simply eaten boiled. The 'floury' ones were the top pick and even-sized large potoatoes were boiled in the pan, the water was drained from the pan and then a dry crumpled cloth was put into the pan on top of the potatoes which had the effect of giving them the floury, almost fluffy, quality which was liked."
"Granny Young always cooked hers like that; she also used a tin teapot which she put back on the stove after making the tea to stew before drinking it. When potato was eaten for a midday meal in the fields it was in the form of potato cake, which was cooked mashed potato with a very little flour and salt, rolled out to a quarter inch or so thick, cut and cooked on a dry pan on the stove.
Potatoes were the sole diet, even 9 years ago, when Jimmie's nephew went down to Killeshandra where the family had an estate; he found their ex-steward's son, now elderly, sitting down with his wife to a dinner of potatoes and nothing more"
My aunt goes on to say that she's rather sceptical of the 14lb of potatoes daily intake, and told me that when she recently visited Dresden in Germany with her daughter, there was a Kartoffeln Restaurant below their hotel which served only potato dishes. They never went in it, only peered down into it and never saw more than a couple of old men in it - she wished now she had looked at the menu properly, as she only remembers that there was potato soup to start with...
Keith
-
Keith
all this talk of irish crub is making me so long to go home
It must be an Irish thing the brewing of the tea , it is how I remember tea being made....I do'nt tea either now.....I will have the poteen instead
I agree with your Aunty 14lbs seems a bit too much
I went to the Ulster Folk museum last year and in these earth floor, thatched roof old buildings, the people who worked there were cooking over open fires just the same way they did back in the 1800. One pot meals and griddles .I can not think what was in the pot because I was too busy eating the lovely soda bread.
Perhaps they might have more information on the food and the amount of potato lbs