Understanding Potatoes

In classical cuisine, the potato is one of the most important of all foods. To many of us today, potatoes are considered an ordinary and humble food. Escoffier, however, treated the potato with great respect. His Guide Culinaire lists more than 50 potato preparations, far more than for any other vegetable or starch.

Considering how important the potato is in the cuisines of Europe and North America, it is surprising to think this vegetable wasn’t widely used until the last half of the eighteenth century. Although the potato had been brought to Europe from the New World a few hundred years earlier, it wasn’t until then that an army pharmacist named Antoine-Auguste Parmentier began promoting its use. To this day, many classical recipes featuring the potato are called Parmentier (par mawn tyay).