Nutritional values per 100 g
Calories: 150; 20% starch; Fat: 0.2 g.
Rich in iron (skin); fibre (skin); glucids, Vitamin C (especially new potatoes and yellow-fleshed varieties); Vitamin B, mineral salts - magnesium and potassium.

Buying potatoes
Look for firm potatoes with no brown or green spots, sprouts or eyes.
Brown paper wrapping is preferable since it keeps out light.
Choose the variety depending on use:

• "mealy" for mashing, French fries and soups
• "waxy" for salads, gratins, scalloped potatoes
• new potatoes to serve on their own

 Family: Solanaceae

Color
Although white, yellow or red-skinned varieties are the ones best known in America and Europe, there are also varieties with yellow, pink or bluish flesh. 

Origin
Discovered on the Andean plateaus 

Peru
It was from Peru that the potato set forth to conquer the world. Peruvian "papas" are yellow: dried in the sun, these potatoes can keep for years. In the days of the Incan empire, the emperor would have them stockpiled to distribute to the peasants in times of famine.

Potato-Growing in Peru
Drawing by Poma de Ayala (16th c.)

Storage
Keep in a cook, dark place; refrigerate; can be frozen after blanching for 5 minutes.

Cooking tips
 Steam, boil, braise, sauté, etc. - potatoes should be cooked til tender in the middle, but not be overcooked.
Add 1 Tbsp. white vinegar to the cooking water to keep potatoes white.
Never leave a raw peeled potato sitting out, since it will oxidize and blacken. Put it into salted water with a little lemon if you are not ready to cook it.

Cooking potatoes in their skins
There is, of course, the traditional baked potato, but you can also remove the cooked potato flesh and whip it with milk, butter and mascarpone or goat cheese.

To make a wonderful potato galette, boil the potatoes in their skins til three-quarters cooked. Allow to cool, peel, grate and brown in a frying pan in a mixture of butter and oil.

The Worldwide Gourmet
Grated and cooked as little cakes, potatoes become "rösti," a traditional accompaniment for sausage or veal escalopes. They may also be served with onions and/or bits of bacon.

A Short History of the Potato

British Isles
The potato was brought back to England in 1586 by Sir Francis Drake. While the potato has become a part of daily life in the British Isles, it had a hesitant beginning here during the reign of Elizabeth I since its flavour was considered bland. The potato continued its incursion into continental Europe, and became widely cultivated in Ireland, becoming so primary a food source that when the potato crops were destroyed by blight in the 1840s, Ireland was thrown into a devastating famine.

France
In France's Jardin des Plantes, Monsieur Parmentier (1737-1813) studied the potato, seeking new ways to improve the quality of this white-fleshed tuber whose culinary properties he had discovered while a soldier in Hanover. In fact, it was thanks to the potato that he had survived while a prisoner of war in Prussia during the Seven Years War. He clashed with peasants who saw the potato as a food suitable only for their pigs - in some provinces it was even said that it would cause leprosy. But anyone passing by Parmentier's home around mealtime would be invited in to share his "boil-up" as he attempted to win new converts to the potato. Louis XIV, faced with a popular uprising over the price of bread, was asking botanists and other scientists to come up with a new food to fill the bellies of the poor. So Parmentier presented his potato "bouillie" to the king and received royal approval - thus his name passed into history and the potato became part of the everyday menu. It was Louis XV who gave the potato its French name "pomme de terre" ("earth apple"); before that time it had been known as the "batata."

In America
The potato travelled back to the New World with the establishment of British colonies in America. First sent from England to colonists in Bermuda in the early 17th century, the potato then travelled to Virginia. A century later potato consumption would become firmly entrenched in the colonies when the tuber was brought to New England by a large migration of Scots-Irish settlers. To the north, in the colony of New France, the Marquis de Vaudreuil, governor of Canada, wrote to Minister Bigot in France on August 8, 1758:

A farmer has had some potatoes brought from France that produce abundantly while requiring little attention. I have obtained a few hundred tubers and have distributed them to the Acadian refugees.

Ireland
The almost mythic connection between the Irish and their potatoes is actually firmly grounded in fact: no one consumes more potatoes per capita! An old Irish proverb says, "Be eating one potato, peeling a second, having a third in your fist and your eye on a fourth." And a more romantic Irish saying holds that "it's easy to halve the potato where there's love."

Potatoes - Culture, Varieties and Cooking Methods

Description
this perennial plant, grown as an annual, includes an above-ground section measuring up to a metre in height, with oblong leaves. As with every tuber, the essential takes place underground. The potatoes are covered with a skin and have little "eyes" on the surface from which new buds emerge.