by Gil Marks
The first mention of the white potato, a misnomer as its color can range from yellow to gray to purple, was by a Spanish expedition to northern Peru in 1537. The Spanish called it patata—a corruption of the Indian words papas (potato) and batata—which led to the English name potato. The French called it pomme de terre (apple of the earth). Europeans thought the knobby potato resembled a little truffle (taratufli in Latin)—hence its German name, kartoffel, and central Yiddish name, kartofl. There are nearly a dozen other Yiddish names for potato, including the Slavic kartoshke, early German erdepl (earth apple), and most notably the Lithuanian and northern Polish bulbe or boulbe, akin to the English bulb. The Yiddish theater slang for an actor blowing a line, "he has a bulbe in his mouth," eventually became shortened to "he made a bulbe," which gave rise to the American term for a mistake or blunder, boo-boo.
When the white potato finally reached Spain around 1570, it was regarded as a source of leprosy or poisonous. The potato traveled to England and Italy around 1585, to Germany about two year later, and to France around 1600. In each of these locations, most sixteenth- and seventeenth-century Europeans, having ingrained eating habits, rejected a number of the American imports, especially the potato. Even after the potato spread across western and central Europe in the mid-eighteenth century and was widely planted by the governments in some areas, people rejected it as food, considering it unhealthy at best or even considering it "the devil's plant." There is a logical explanation for this notion: Exposure to light produces a toxin in the potato called solanine, indicated by a green tinge, which results in a bitter taste as well as an allergic reaction in some people. In addition, the first Europeans who tried potatoes ate them raw, which can induce upset stomachs.
Initially, when the white potato was utilized at all, it was for animal feed, and a much-contested act of the British Parliament was required to allow the potato to be used for even that purpose. The French, at one point, outlawed growing it entirely. When Prussia's Frederick the Great sent free potatoes to feed his peasants during the famine of 1774, they refused to eat them, although they were starving. Only in the face of abject poverty, most notably in Ireland after 1780, did potatoes—which grow in abundance relatively quickly, even in poor soil—become an important part of the human diet.
The potato owes its current widespread popularity to Antoine-Auguste Parmentier, who spent time as a German prisoner during the Seven Years' War (1756—1763). Although the Germans themselves steadfastly refused to eat potatoes, they had no qualms about feeding them to livestock or their French captives. After surviving his steady diet of potatoes, Parmentier realized that not only had he failed to develop leprosy or become poisoned, but he had emerged rather sound, considering the circumstances. During the ensuing decades, he championed the potato as a source of sustenance for the masses of France. He finally enlisted the support of Louis XVI and potato cultivation spread. Beginning in 1770, the viability of many traditional food crops in France was reduced by a short cooling period. The potato subsequently proved vital when famine and hunger swept over France in the 1790s in the wake of the Revolution. The Germans soon joined the bandwagon and, by the end of the eighteenth century, were using potatoes to make a variety of dishes, such as kloese (dumplings), salads, soups, pancakes, and breads, as well as flour. This new attitude, however, was primarily on the part of the masses as most upper-class Germans viewed potatoes as "poor person's food" and deigned not to eat them. As late as the middle of the nineteenth century, most Americans viewed the potato as animal feed; it was the arrival of German immigrants around this time and the development of the russet Burbank potato that led to the popularization of the potato in the United States. Residents of the Mediterranean and central Asia eventually incorporated the potato into dishes as well. Nevertheless, the center of its popularity lay to the north.
In eastern Europe, the potato took longer to gain widespread acceptance, even among the poor. Due to generally impoverished circumstances, as well as climactic conditions and backward agronomy that precluded the growing of most fresh vegetables, starches were indispensable in eastern Europe. Then, a series of crop failures occurred in Ukraine and Poland in 1839 and 1840, and the government ordered the peasants to plant potatoes; tubers were finally grown for the first time and consumed in large numbers in that part of the world. Within a short period, these hearty tubers emerged as the staple of the northeastern European diet, replacing buckwheat and legumes. Jews consumed potatoes in even greater numbers than their non-Jewish neighbors. Significantly, in the northern Romanian version of the Polish song "Bulbes," the word beblekh (beans) was used instead of bulbes (potatoes), as legumes constituted the bulk of the diet farther south.
Potatoes provided an inexpensive way to fill the hungry stomachs of the exploding Jewish population. During the century after their popularization, any Polish Jew with even a small plot of land would plant some potatoes to support the family or make arrangements to rent part of a nearby property belonging to a non-Jew. The first potatoes of the year were usually dug up around the seventeenth of the month of Tammuz and then replanted through the holiday of Sukkot. Every Jewish residence maintained at least a small cellar or other cool place in which to store the family's supply of potatoes as well as beets, carrots, onions, and turnips and barrels of various pickles. Properly stored, potatoes are capable of keeping for up to eight months. Poorer families survived the winter on potatoes and sauerkraut. The minimum supply of potatoes for the winter for a family of six was 1,260 pounds, but typically they would use double that amount. Many eastern European families ate potatoes, often seasoned with onions, three times a day. They were used to create new dishes, such as potatonik (a cross between a kugel and a bread), as well as incorporated into various traditional dishes, most notably cholent (Sabbath stew), knaidlach (dumplings), knishes, pirogen (filled pasta), and kugel (pudding). Hot boiled potatoes in cold beet borscht became a particular favorite. Sometimes boiled potatoes were eaten simply with sour cream, providing complementary nutrition. The potato latke (pancake) emerged as the prototypical Ashkenazic Hanukkah food. The latke also gave rise to the Yiddish saying, "Fun a proste buble kumt aroys di geshmakste lakte" (From the lowly potato you get the tastiest pancake).
At the time of the partition of Poland among Austria, Prussia, and Russia in 1815, the Jewish population of Russian Poland numbered about one and a quarter million. By the census of 1897, that number, despite massive emigration to America and Israel beginning in 1881, grew to about five million (15 percent of the total population of Poland). Not coincidentally, this Jewish population explosion—reflecting a growth rate more than twice that of their non- Jewish neighbors—corresponded to the availability and emerging popularity of the potato in eastern Europe. Although a nineteenth-century German rabbi tried to forbid potatoes during Passover, his attempt failed and they became a predominant Ashkenazic Passover food; in many northeastern European households, potatoes even served as the karpas for the Seder.
The potato's first use in European kitchens was in stews and then in soups. Potato soups became extremely popular in many areas because they fed a large number of people using very limited resources. At some point, people discovered that the smashed cooked potatoes were tasty apart from the stew and that the bland tuber could be cooked in plain water as well, leading to mashed potatoes. In the sixteenth century, the Spanish made a fritter using dried potatoes, but the first record of fried sliced potatoes, the dish Americans call French fries, was in seventeenth-century Holland. Although the most famous way of frying potatoes is credited to the French, that method is actually seldom used in France, while it is common throughout much of the Mediterranean.
Potato salads also became popular in the nineteenth century. The first description in England of the white potato was in the original 1597 edition of John Gerard's detailed description of plants, Herball. The author mistakenly thought it was a native of North America and called it the "Virginia Potato." The earliest record of a potato salad—like
dish was in the 1633 re-edition of Herball. Similar salads, although then served hot, had appeared in Germany by the 1800s, and by the end of the century, most countries had developed some form of a potato salad in a vinaigrette. German Jews served potato salad cold on the Sabbath, a practice that later became widespread among American Jews and Israelis. Jewish Cookery (Philadelphia, 1871) included recipes for "Potato Bread," "Potato Fritters," "Potato Souffle, For Passover," "Potato Soup," "Potato Stew," and "Salad of Potatoes."
In the 1920s, European Jews brought the potato to Israel; following the French example, in Hebrew, they called it tapuach haadamah (apple of the earth) or the shortened tapud. The early Socialist-Zionists in Israel, who despised European Jewish culture and Yiddish, disparagingly referred to the latter as kartofl Yidish (potato tongue). Initially, kibbutzniks found they could grow this vegetable only in the coolness of the winter; then in the 1930s, the introduction of sprinklers for irrigation greatly expanded production. Today, potatoes are grown throughout Israel and are a standard ingredient in Israeli cooking.
(See also Ajada, Aloo Makalla, Dumpling, Knish, Kugel, Latke, Peshkado Frito, and Potatonik)
Potatonik
Potatonik is a combination of a potato kugel and bread.
Origin: Poland
Other names: Galicia: kartofelnik; Poland: bulbanik, bulbenik.
Potatonik is the American name for this northeastern European dish, which is less dense than a potato kugel, but still somewhat heavy textured. In Ukraine, kartofelnik refers to potato patties with a filling of ground beef or mushrooms and sautéed onions sandwiched in between. In the American Yiddish theater, a bulbanik (bulbes is a Yiddish word for potatoes), sounding like bilbul (mix-up), became slang for someone who talked with a stammer or an actor who blew a line, as that person talked as if he or she had a potato in their mouth.
Potatonik comes in both casserole and loaf forms. Unlike most potato breads, potatonik is made from raw spuds; it has a rough texture and marked potato flavor, along with a pronounced accent of onions and black pepper. Some versions include unpeeled potatoes. Sometimes rye or buckwheat flour is substituted for the wheat flour. Those "potatoniks" made without flour and yeast, some lightened a little with beaten egg whites, are actually potato kugel.
In Europe, the rustic bulbenik was always a homemade food; some families prepared it for every Sabbath, while others reserved it for rare occasions, such as Hanukkah, and served only standard potato kugel for the Sabbath. However, in America and Israel most second-generation housewives—perhaps intimidated by the yeast or turned off by the oiliness and old-fashioned nature of the dish—stopped making "spud-nik." A few Jewish bakeries and markets in larger American cities took up the slack. In some American synagogues, potatonik became a traditional food at kiddushes, where it was served alongside pickled herring, kichlach (egg cookies), and schnapps. However, by the end of the twentieth century, the dish had become a rarity, although it could occasionally be found in some Brooklyn bakeries. Potatonik is usually served as a side dish with meat or poultry, sometimes accompanied with applesauce or, at a dairy meal, sour cream.
Polish Potato Kugel Bread (Potatonik)
9 to 12 servings
[PAREVE or MEAT]
1 package (2¼ teaspoons) active dry yeast or 1 (0.6-ounce) cake fresh yeast
¼ cup warm water (105°F to 115°F for dry yeast; 80°F to 85°F for fresh yeast)
1 teaspoon sugar
3 large eggs, lightly beaten
½ cup vegetable oil or schmaltz
About 1¼ teaspoons table salt or 2½ teaspoons kosher salt
About ¼ teaspoon ground white or black pepper
½ teaspoon baking powder or ¼ teaspoon cream of tartar
3 pounds (6 large) baking (russet) potatoes, unpeeled or peeled, and grated
2 medium onions, grated (about 1½ cups)
2½ cups (12.5 ounces) unbleached all-purpose flour
1. Dissolve the yeast in the water. Stir in the sugar and let stand until foamy, 5 to 10 minutes. In a large bowl, combine the eggs, oil, salt, pepper, and baking powder. Add the potatoes and onions. Stir in the yeast mixture and flour. Cover with plastic wrap or a kitchen towel and let stand in a warm, draft-free place for 1 hour.
2. Oil one 13-by-9-inch baking pan, two (2-quart) 8-inch square or 11-by-7-inch casserole dishes, or three 8-by-4-inch loaf pans. Pour the potato mixture into the pan(s), cover, and let stand for 20 minutes.
3. Preheat the oven to 400°F.
4. Bake for 30 minutes. At this point, some cooks brush the top of the potatonik with a little oil for a crisper surface. Reduce the heat to 350°F and continue baking until golden brown, about 30 minutes for a 13-by-9-inch pan or loaf pan, or 15 minutes for 2-quart pans. Remove from the oven and turn out of the pan(s) onto a wire rack. Serve warm or cooled.
P'tcha
P'tcha is jellied calves feet.
Origin: Eastern Europe
Other names: Galicia: drelies; Germany: sulze: Israel: regel kerushah; Lithuania: fisnoga; Poland: fissel, galarita, petcha, pitse, p'tcha, p'tsha; Romania: piftie; Ukraine: cholodyetz.
Among the relics of the Ottomans' centuries-long control of the Balkans that began in the fourteenth century was a hearty Turkish peasant soup based on lamb's feet, known as paca corbasi, from the Turkish paca (foot), and called soupa patsas or simply patsas by the Greeks. When cooled, the gelatin in the bones firms the liquid into an entirely different dish, an aspic. Foot soup and aspic spread to central and eastern Europe, where it was made from cow's feet instead of sheep's feet and was more typically enjoyed cold and jellied. The dish allowed cooks to transform one of the least expensive parts of the animal into an Ashkenazic delicacy.
The process of preparing foot gelatin was quite time-consuming, so among Ashkenazim it was never an everyday or even weekly dish, but rather an occasional Sabbath lunch treat lovingly prepared by a housewife or grandmother.
A calf's or cow's foot was first rotated over a flame to singe off any hair then thoroughly scraped and cleaned. It was then hacked into pieces and boiled for hours with onions, salt, and pepper until the meat had fallen off of the bone and the bones had imparted all their essence into the cooking liquid. Some people ate the hot soup as a main course for Sabbath lunch, at which it was an occasional winter substitute for cholent. The soup would be left in the oven overnight and served hot with vinegar, sliced hard-boiled eggs, and fresh challah or challah toast rubbed with garlic; diners eagerly sucked the marrow out of the bones. Some enjoyed the cooled version, which was typically studded with sliced hard-boiled eggs and plenty of garlic, as an appetizer for Sabbath lunch; others offered it hot at Sabbath lunch and then served the cooled, gelled leftovers at shalosh seudot (the third Sabbath meal). When hot, the meat is meltingly soft and the cooking liquid is a concentrated broth, but as the dish cools, the meat toughens and the liquid congeals. Therefore, some cooks leave the meat in larger shreds, while others, as a way to tenderize it when cold, finely chop or mash the meat.
For generations, jellied foot soup and calf's foot gelatin—the names of these varied from region to region—were among the most beloved eastern Ashkenazic dishes, perhaps following only cholent (Sabbath stew) as a Sabbath favorite. In Galicia (now southern Poland), some cooks added sugar for a sweet-and-sour flavor.
In a 1915 short story, "What Kind of Rabbi We Have," Sholem Aleichem described some typical eastern European dishes at a special Sabbath lunch: "And after that the cold fish and the meat from yesterday's tzimmes, and then the jellied calf's foot, or fisnoga as you call it, with thin slices of garlic..." The whimsical name fisnoga from Lithuania and Latvia actually had a practical origin, as Litkvaks from the north of the country had difficulty pronouncing the sh sound and thus the word fishe (fish) and fis (foot) sounded the same; to differentiate the two homophones, the Slavic word for foot (noga) was added to the Teutonic word for foot (fis), and the term became fisnoga (literally "foot foot").
Initially, in Russia and Ukraine, either th
e term p'tcha or fisnoga connoted the hot soup, while the cooled dish was called cholodyetz (kholod means "cold" in Russian) or farglivert (Yiddish meaning "coagulated"). Eventually, the cooled jellied form became the principal way of serving the dish and p'tcha emerged as the predominant name.
In the nineteenth century, immigrants brought p'tcha to America and Israel. The dish was included in the earliest American Jewish cookbooks—all by authors who were initially from a German background—including Jewish Cookery (Philadelphia, 1871) and Aunt Babette's (Cincinnati, 1889); in the latter book, the dish was entitled "Sulze von Kalbsfuessen (jelly from calf's foot)." The Jewish Encyclopedia (New York, 1903) refers to the dish as "petshai in Lithuania, drelies in South Russia, Galicia, and Rumania."
At least through the first half of the twentieth century, p'tcha was well received by most of the first generation of American Jews to be brought up on the dish. P'tcha was a standard at Catskills resorts, weddings, and other special occasions. The prolific science and science fiction writer, Isaac Asimov, in his autobiography, described p'tcha as "the real ambrosia of the gods." That most certainly became a minority opinion, as today probably no other Ashkenazic dish evokes more outright antipathy among Ashkenazim than p'tcha. The gelatinous texture, grayish hue, and garlicky flavor of the cooled liquid with the firmer grayish brownish strips of boiled meat, fail to translate to most modern tastes. Still, p'tcha does retain popularity among certain groups, especially the Gerer Chasidim, and can occasionally be found today in a few delis and eastern European—style restaurants, and in some bubbes' kitchens.
(See also Patsas)
Ashkenazic Calf's Foot Gelatin (P'tcha)
6 to 8 servings
[MEAT]
2 calf's feet (2 to 2½ pounds total), cleaned and cut into 2-inch pieces (have your butcher cut the bones for you)
2 medium yellow onions, sliced
