[HN Gopher] What the Irish Ate Before Potatoes
___________________________________________________________________
What the Irish Ate Before Potatoes
Author : vinnyglennon
Score : 179 points
Date : 2021-10-16 21:54 UTC (1 days ago)
(HTM) web link (www.bonappetit.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (www.bonappetit.com)
| dghughes wrote:
| I find it amazing that Ireland would be eating a plant from the
| west coast of an isolated mountainous region of South America
| less than 100 years after Europeans went there. Even things like
| oranges and bananas were rare in the late 1800s early 1900s in
| the US and Canada.
|
| It's amazing how much of food from the Americas mostly central
| and southern is normal everyday food. What would we all be eating
| if the Americas went undiscovered until recently?
| pvaldes wrote:
| And there are lots of foods to discover still in the mountains
| of tropical areas
| EdwardDiego wrote:
| Well, a staple food of the native people of New Zealand was a
| sweet potato originating from South America, they brought it
| with them in the 13th century when settling NZ from 'Hawaiki',
| their ancestral homeland that is thought to be either the Cook
| or Society Islands.
|
| https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/e/e4/Chronolo...
| Gustomaximus wrote:
| > bananas were rare in the late 1800s early 1900
|
| My father in law born in Norway in 1950s can remember getting
| excited because the store had these bananas he'd heard about.
| He ate his first one with the skin and didn't think they were
| so great.
| Symbiote wrote:
| British children in the 1940s were familiar enough with
| bananas that they missed them during WW2 [1]. Import was
| banned during the war because the refrigerated ships were
| needed elsewhere (and the voyage was risky), but resumed in
| the early 1950s (?). They were widely imported from the 1880s
| up until WW2 [2], but I'm not sure how often the typical
| person would eat one.
|
| (And I don't know how much of this British Empire trade would
| have spread to Ireland.)
|
| [1] https://www.bbc.co.uk/history/ww2peopleswar/stories/03/a2
| 734...
|
| [2] https://cadmus.eui.eu/bitstream/handle/1814/11486/RSCAS_2
| 009...
| stephenhuey wrote:
| Bread and pasta, perhaps?
| hn_throwaway_99 wrote:
| Though that pasta would be pretty bland without any tomato
| sauce!
|
| Also weird to think that, as much as many people associate
| tomatoes with Italy, they were also brought from the
| Americas.
| axiolite wrote:
| > Though that pasta would be pretty bland without any
| tomato sauce!
|
| Fettuccine alfredo.
| zeckalpha wrote:
| > Created by Alfredo di Lelio I (1882-1959)
|
| https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fettuccine_Alfredo
|
| Many things we assume Italians ate forever are relatively
| new: Brocollini, Tiramisu, Ciabatta were all created in
| the 20th century.
| MandieD wrote:
| A lot of HN (myself included) is older than ciabatta
| (1982!)
|
| https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ciabatta
| igouy wrote:
| Here you'll find non-tomato condimento --
|
| https://www.google.com/books/edition/Sauces_Shapes_Pasta_th
| e...
| thaumasiotes wrote:
| > Though that pasta would be pretty bland without any
| tomato sauce!
|
| You'd use onions and garlic. Those are both still massively
| popular today.
|
| Cheese, garlic, and oil are all staples for flavoring
| pasta, and none of them rely on a new world crop.
| vram22 wrote:
| And cheese and garlic are used with bread too.
| ImprovedSilence wrote:
| All good thoughts. I think Italy has the soil and weather
| for goood tomatoes though, so it took off. That said, I
| think most sauces in Italy are not tomato based. Simple
| things like Oil and salt is pretty common on pasta (and
| VERY tasty if u ask me). But to the point, yeah, bread,
| pasta, and olive oil...
| amatic wrote:
| Carbonara, though. Pasta, eggs, bacon, cheese and pepper.
| Pigs, cows and wheat came with the first farmers, some 6k
| years ago. Chicken around 2k years ago, but they could have
| used other eggs. Pepper much later, silk road trade. I
| imagine they could have had something like carbonara a long
| time ago.
| igouy wrote:
| Guanciale.
|
| https://cookandeatbetter.wordpress.com/2010/05/06/recipe-
| box...
| cto_of_antifa wrote:
| It's always been discovered. People lived there.
| thriftwy wrote:
| A signature plant for south of Russia/Ukraine, an eastern
| europe speciality, is also a new world plant: Sunflower.
| juki wrote:
| This comes up surprisingly often on HN, but there isn't really
| anything surprising about it. The whole reason Europeans went
| to the Americas was to bring back things to be sold in European
| markets. They might have been a bit disappointed when potatoes
| turned out to be so easy to grow in European climates that
| there was no money to be made by importing them, though.
| deaddodo wrote:
| Ireland specifically switched to potatoes as a part of the
| tenant farming system the British instituted on the Island and
| its desire throughout Europe combined with the necessity to
| grow enough food to feed themselves off the product.
|
| Pre-Colombian exchanges, Ireland mostly ate oats/grains, a
| small variety of veggies and fruits, dairy goods (cheese and
| milk), meats (cattle and sheep) and a lot of fish. You can
| still see a bit of this variety in certain areas like Howth in
| Dublin and the less touched western towns.
| dghughes wrote:
| My ancestors left Ireland only to arrive in Canada to the
| same system of absentee landlords i.e. the British who took
| nearly everything from tenants, the farmers.
| EdwardDiego wrote:
| Yep, the potato was favoured for the ability to grow enough
| food to feed your family on the shitty scraps of ground your
| absentee landlords "allowed" you to keep.
|
| In a similar vein, the potato revolutionised Maori inter-
| tribal warfare when introduced to Aotearoa New Zealand
| (possibly more so than the musket), as you could grow far
| more calories from the same soil with potatoes than the
| traditional kumara/sweet potato - and they kept far better
| than kumara while on the move.
|
| This allowed for longer campaigning against opposing tribes,
| which led to widespread mass migrations to escape enemy
| tribes - hence why the area now occupied by Auckland Tamaki
| Makaurau, our largest city, was mostly depopulated when
| Europeans started settling it.
|
| And of course, those mass migrations led to more conflicts.
| Jensson wrote:
| Yeah, as a rule of thumb potato and rice can feed twice as
| many people compared to wheat or other crops. Europe had
| neither so the potato was an instant hit since the
| alternative was to starve.
| Spooky23 wrote:
| The other factor is that potatoes can be concealed
| easily, so when armies swept through to seize food, you'd
| keep your potatoes and not starve.
| [deleted]
| [deleted]
| irrational wrote:
| I want to seen an article like this for every food culture that
| is now heavily associated with foods from the Americas. Italy
| without tomatoes? No chilis? No beans? No corn? Etc. No potatoes
| means no vodka for the Russians.
| hohloma wrote:
| Russian vodka is made from wheat.
| raffraffraff wrote:
| Indian. Imagine an Indian menu without baigan, aloo, chili
| peppers or rich tomato based sauces (chana masala).
| OJFord wrote:
| The Portuguese brought chillies to India from SA, before which
| they used black pepper for (obviously milder) heat.
|
| That was a bit of a 'mind blown' moment for me when I saw it on
| _Raja, Rasoi, aur apni Kahaaniyaan_ (kings, kitchens, and their
| stories^) - quite a nice food /history/culture programme, each
| episode being a different region in India.
|
| (^to save someone pointing it out, it's actually 'king,
| kitchen, and his [or its] stories', I just thought that sounded
| more awkward, and confuses my description of it being a
| different region, sometimes king, food, culture etc. each
| episode.)
| justshowpost wrote:
| Wheat, oat and barley?
| pvaldes wrote:
| Plus sea birds, seafood, seals an whales. Americans ate a lot
| of acorns also, and many europeans did, so maybe irish did the
| same
|
| And of course lots of rabbits
| rffrancon wrote:
| "They did eat meat, of course, though the reliance on milk meant
| that beef was a rarity"
|
| I find that hard to believe. Cows need to be pregnant to milk.
| Roughly half of their calves would be male. Which were primarily
| valuable as meat. Further, cows produce more milk than their
| calves require, which means calves could be matured.
|
| Beef was probably proportionally as prevalent as diary.
| watwut wrote:
| That 0.5 calve per cow would amount to rare. Plus, meat is
| prseved in form of sausage or dry meat - not steak or raw form.
| praxulus wrote:
| You can only mature the calves if you can spare the milk, and
| you get a lot more calories from just drinking the milk.
|
| A cow produces roughly 40 times more calories worth of milk
| over its lifetime than you get from the beef from one animal.
| There's no way it would be similarly prevalent unless they were
| raising herds specifically for beef.
| dpeck wrote:
| Gastropod had a great episode about potatoes that touched on this
| and a lot of the myths / great man of history stories about the
| introduction of the potato into Europe. Worth a listen if you're
| into food, history, and related topics
| https://gastropod.com/this-spuds-for-you/
| cyocum wrote:
| For those who want more on this topic, you will want to read
| Early Irish Farming by Fergus Kelly
| (http://www.worldcat.org/oclc/462769441) and Early Medieval
| Ireland, AD 400-1100 by Aidan O'Sullivan, et al.
| (http://www.worldcat.org/oclc/1257790078).
| dustintrex wrote:
| In Scandinavia, which is nearly as potato-heavy as Ireland,
| turnips were a primary staple crop before the potato came around,
| so much so that in much of the world the rutabaga, a large
| version of the turnip, is known as a "swede". I would be
| surprised if this was not the case in pre-1600s Ireland as well.
|
| FWIW, in nearby Scotland "neeps and tatties" (turnips & potatoes)
| is still the canonical accompaniment to haggis.
| [deleted]
| yesbabyyes wrote:
| > the rutabaga, a large version of the turnip, is known as a
| "swede".
|
| And "rutabaga" is from "rotabagge", the dialectal word for
| turnip in the region of Smaland, from where the majority of
| Swedish immigrants to North America came (over 1 million Swedes
| emigrated to North America in the second half of the 19th
| century).
| dustintrex wrote:
| TIL!
| RandallBrown wrote:
| And here I thought Smaland was just a cute name for the kids
| area at Ikea.
| fifilura wrote:
| It is actually somewhat suitable. Not only because "sma"
| means small in swedish.
|
| But also because the 1800s version of the ball-pit
| consisted of lots of round pebbles, put there particularly
| in Smaland by some evil ice-sheet-wielding mastermind, that
| the kids played with by carrying them from the barren
| Smalandish fields.
| yesbabyyes wrote:
| Actually, it's kind of the other way around: IKEA, and
| Ingvar Kamprad, its founder, are from Smaland. He started
| selling matches as a young boy (connecting to another
| Swedish business empire of yore, Swedish Match and its
| founder Ivar Kreuger).
|
| IKEA is an acronym: Ingvar Kamprad, Elmtaryd, Agunnaryd.
| Elmtaryd was the Kamprad family farm and Agunnaryd is the
| nearby village.
|
| My father-in-law is from the very same area in Smaland as
| Kamprad, and they were born the same year.
| celticninja wrote:
| I knew what a swede was and had heard the term rutabaga, just
| never knew they were the same thing.
| noneeeed wrote:
| Oh, my goodness, the whole turnip/swede thing has always
| confused me, but never enough to investigate as I don't eat
| them very often.
| riedel wrote:
| In Germany some less digestible Inulin rich roots were also
| commonly used before the potatoe became ubiquitous like the
| Jerusalem Artichoke (which also was imported like potatoes).
| Now they are mostly used to produce alcohol. Scorzonera are
| still quite popular.
| _nalply wrote:
| I cook them once a year. They taste good but it's a pain to
| peel away the black and tacky skin.
| intrepidhero wrote:
| Wait, Rowanberries are edible?
|
| > Rowan fruit contains sorbic acid, and when raw also contains
| parasorbic acid (about 0.4%-0.7% in the European rowan[15]),
| which causes indigestion and can lead to kidney damage, but heat
| treatment (cooking, heat-drying etc.) and, to a lesser extent,
| freezing, renders it nontoxic by changing it to the benign sorbic
| acid. They are also usually too astringent to be palatable when
| raw.
|
| https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rowan
|
| Oh, only kinda.
| pvaldes wrote:
| There were even selected for that, but we talk about a
| different species Sorbus domestica that is like a small pear.
| Sorbus aucuparia is the wild one.
|
| Both edible if processed, domestica is cultured by its fruit
| but pears are better, so is rare nowadays unless you live in a
| very cold place.
| zoomablemind wrote:
| Somehow I remember that Rowan fruits taste more palatable (even
| sweteer) after the first frosty week.
| Tagbert wrote:
| Other fruits are like that. In North America, the native
| persimmon is highly astringent and inedible until after the
| first frost and then it becomes very sweet.
| quickthrower2 wrote:
| Like beans that need to be cooked and processed carefully
| before consumption.
| tvb12 wrote:
| Beans have to be carefully processed? I soak them in a half-
| gallon Ball jar for at least a day, but that's pretty much
| it. I usually swap the water out a few times because I
| procrastinate pretty badly when it comes to cooking and the
| water gets murky after half a day or so. If I haven't cooked
| them by the next morning I toss them in the fridge so that
| they don't start smelling sour. What have I been neglecting
| to do, and when should I expect it to kill me?
| nanomonkey wrote:
| Actually the lacto-fermentation process that you're
| starting to do to the beans is great for getting rid of the
| phytic acid and other "anti-nutrients". Just rinse them and
| add clean water before cooking them. Tossing in a teaspoon
| of baking soda will off set any acid produced from the
| process which might cause the beans to remain too firm
| while cooking.
| lathiat wrote:
| When I think of beans I just think botulism. But that's
| more to do with preserving them, not sure this within a day
| or two cooking method applies there.
| https://www.cdc.gov/foodsafety/communication/home-canning-
| an...
| loonster wrote:
| Reheating to 176F for 10 minutes (or 185F for 5m) will
| deactivate the botulinum toxin.
|
| This won't kill the botulism spores, just the toxin that
| can kill you.
| pvaldes wrote:
| Yes, they are poisonous raw. Not a real problem because
| they are swallowed will go out again entire but you can't
| made bread from beans without a lot of troubles
| dunham wrote:
| Just certain varieties are toxic if not properly cooked. I
| think red kidney beans are one of them.
| sbierwagen wrote:
| >cooking
|
| That's all you need. Thorough cooking deactivates the
| phytohaemagglutinin, which otherwise would give you a bad
| time https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Phytohaemagglutinin
|
| >Poisoning can be induced from as few as five raw beans,
| and symptoms occur within three hours, beginning with
| nausea, then vomiting, which can be severe and sustained
| (profuse), followed by diarrhea.
| billfruit wrote:
| Another issue might be that the water used for soaking,
| will froth up, and start to smell bad. This happens if it
| is let standing for longer than 12 hours usually.
| cheese_goddess wrote:
| Why is everyone constantly tossing (or banging etc) things
| when they're cooking? I'm usually very careful with my
| cooking ingredients and handle them delicately and with
| calm, measured motions. I'm especially careful when I'm
| chopping up things with a small cleaver or a very big
| knife, say, or when I'm frying things. I would never dare
| "bang" something in the oven (as I've seen a few recipes
| instruct).
| jmclnx wrote:
| Some ancient roman historians wrote about this diet also. I never
| saw the full text
| malkia wrote:
| from relatively lower carb, to quite the high carb!
| Lio wrote:
| > though the reliance on milk meant that beef was a rarity
|
| Something fishy about that statement.
|
| Here's the thing about cows, they cone in two sexes.
|
| If you drink a lot of milk you've got to keep a lot of cows
| pregnant. You only need a few bulls that.
|
| That means you got to do something with the male calves you don't
| need for milk and don't want to feed.
|
| They don't magically disappear. They either eat them as veal
| calves (minus the crate) or eat them as bullocks.
| i_am_proteus wrote:
| Male cattle were castrated and used as draught animals ("oxen")
| in many European societies.
|
| Either way, dairy cattle and draught cattle would get butchered
| and eaten at end of useful life, unless they died of disease.
| And there was also plenty of cattle raised for food in the
| areas that had the land for it.
| dekken_ wrote:
| they might have not owned a bull but rented one when needed.
| TheSpiceIsLife wrote:
| How is that a response to the parent comment?
|
| Milking cows need to be having calves regularly so they keep
| producing milk.
|
| Not owning a bull doesn't make that problem go away.
| OJFord wrote:
| Is that true? I know nothing about the dairy industry, but
| human wet nurses aren't constantly pregnant so they can do
| their job, as I understand it production's just a gradual
| response to the 'request'.
| stormdennis wrote:
| Good point, cows are usually "dried out" prior to being
| impregnated again.
| karatinversion wrote:
| But they still get half their calves with no long term future
| as dairy cows - so someone will end up eating most of them.
| watwut wrote:
| That would give you the rare meat. No one claims they were
| vegetarians.
|
| But, if they killed and eate 0.5 young males per cow per
| year, that would make the meat available once per year per
| cow. They could dry it or make sausage or whatever, but
| that does not make it a lot.
| progre wrote:
| Good thing, there is this other animal that basically
| eats garbage and shits fertilizer. The byproduct of this
| is a surpus of pork a few times a year.
| watwut wrote:
| The claim people take offense for is specifically about
| beef - not about pork.
|
| But really, at least based on what my grandmother said,
| meat was luxury item once a week thing. Cooked in away
| that uses it to the max. They were relatively well off
| small farm family, they were not poor. The traditional
| food I read about when I read about historical lifestyles
| was also largely non-meat. (Not to be confused with
| vegetarian, like bacon etc was part of it)
|
| The eat meat everyday thing we have going on was not a
| thing in the past. It requires huge amount of animals
| being raised and killed, meat to be stored in freezers
| and so on.
| Spooky23 wrote:
| Rich people ate the beef. Usually the normal folks would eat
| less desired cuts.
|
| Overall, ranching and dairy are almost always two different
| businesses with different factors.
|
| Chicken and eggs are similar. Traditionally, young chicken was
| rare as the economics of a traditional farm were such that
| eating chickens were akin to killing the golden goose.
| Likewise, keeping beef cattle around consumes a lot of grass
| that could have made butter.
|
| Another factor to consider that as the British took over, their
| inheritance laws took over, so farm plots would get divided
| over time. Large herds became increasingly difficult.
| secondcoming wrote:
| The most famous story about cattle raiding is this one:
| https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tain_Bo_Cuailnge
|
| (Contains spoilers)
| uyt wrote:
| TIL about "bog butter" and half a dozen other culinary terms that
| I've never heard of. Maybe for good reasons we don't make these
| food anymore? (banbidh, old curds, real curds, bainne clabair,
| sowens, flummery, etc)
| stan_rogers wrote:
| Clabber (bainne clabair) is still going strong, at least where
| the Ulster Scots washed ashore in the States.
| dustintrex wrote:
| Pastoral societies like Mongolia still retain many of these:
|
| http://www.khovsgoldairyproject.org/news/mongolia/dairy-prod...
|
| Iceland also has quite a selection of dairy, with skyr recently
| becoming trendy.
| MPSimmons wrote:
| A _lot_ of these things sound like various kinds of cottage
| cheese, yogurt and cultured butter. I would guess we _do_ make
| things they might recognize, just with modern standards of
| cleanliness.
| amyjess wrote:
| Also, these are all staples of Indian diets even in modern
| day: paneer, raita, ghee, etc.
| m0llusk wrote:
| Seems more like issues with production and markets. When my
| parents were growing up on a farm they made butter and sold it
| at market, but the creme freshe which was a byproduct of the
| whole process was considered to have no value and they cooked
| with it because it could not be sold. Now creme freshe is
| considered a luxury gourmet ingredient for fine cooking and
| commands a premium. Food fashions vary wildly.
| chadcmulligan wrote:
| I have vague memories of my (Irish) grandmother making flummery
| when I was young. It tasted like strawberry mousse or junket
| iirc.
| bobthepanda wrote:
| I imagine the need for bog butter probably declined, in
| particular due to the advent of refrigerating things.
|
| It turns out that burying things in the fairly cool,
| temperature-stable, low-oxygen ground is fairly decent at
| preserving things. Kimchi in Korea was traditionally produced
| in this manner.
| rangoon626 wrote:
| This continuing to propagate this stereotype is offensive to
| Irish people, such as myself. Why was this allowed to get posted
| here, Dang?
| ninechars wrote:
| I'm Irish. I didn't know this stuff. I found it interesting.
| Calm down kid.
| pvaldes wrote:
| An historical fact is just a fact. There is not point in being
| outraged by the truth that Irish (as many other places) eat
| lots of some particular food.
| fenderbluesjr wrote:
| I'm Irish.. what is offensive about it? Potatoes are a big part
| of our culinary history
| stanford_labrat wrote:
| I'm Irish as well...my family's food joke is that nothing
| grows in Ireland except: milk, fish, and potatoes (and meat,
| if you're lucky!)
| eropple wrote:
| My family's includes rocks. Lots of rocks grow there.
| vram22 wrote:
| I'm not Irish, but Irish friends tell me that tons of air
| grows there too. In fact, that may be while it is called
| Eire.
| raffraffraff wrote:
| I don't get it either, and I'm also Irish (born here, lives
| here all my life)
| [deleted]
| lljk_kennedy wrote:
| I think you'll be hard pressed to find an Irish person who'd be
| offended at this... I thought it was a great read (as an Irish
| person).
| phenkdo wrote:
| Honest question, not meaning to be offensive or hurtful at all. I
| know how raw the wounds of the famine are etc.
|
| How do historians _objectively_ - provided there is one - view
| the British empire 's involvement in Ireland over much of the
| last millennium? Was it particularly repressive vis-a-vis other
| medieval empires in their dominions/spheres of influence?
| Spooky23 wrote:
| It was colonialism, with all of the attributes associated with
| it. Irish were seen as a lesser people and various phases and
| the machinery of empire acted appropriately.
|
| IMO it is a similar story to India in many ways. The Brits
| leveraged and undermined the existing power structure and
| extracted value at whatever cost deemed appropriate. Was there
| some "benefit"... at some level yes. Were there atrocities and
| disgusting levels of suffering without the consent of the
| governed? Yes.
| uptime wrote:
| There is a very interesting podcast on the Irish/Indian
| overlap. The Irish themselves are not spotless but there was
| some support. This duo does well researched stuff and helps a
| lot if you are interested in Brexit and NI.
| https://www.theirishpassport.com/podcast/ireland-and-
| india-a...
| mkmk wrote:
| Not an exact answer, but I heartily endorse the
| /r/AskHistorians/ subreddit for these types of questions. It is
| moderated quite differently from the rest of Reddit, and
| questions like this are answered in-depth. There are several
| threads on the Irish Potato Famine that may answer a subset of
| your question.
| cyocum wrote:
| To help answer your first question, I would recommend reading
| Gaelic and Gaelicized Ireland in the Middle Ages, 2nd ed. by K.
| W. Nicholls (http://www.worldcat.org/oclc/471778201) and A New
| History of Ireland, Volume II and III
| (http://www.worldcat.org/oclc/495293791 and
| http://www.worldcat.org/oclc/299242437 respectively). As for
| your second question, I am not an expert enough to answer
| because I tend to study the earlier period before the Norman
| invasion.
| cheese_goddess wrote:
| > In 1690, one British visitor to Ireland noted that the natives
| ate and drank milk "above twenty several sorts of ways and what
| is strangest for the most part love it best when sourest." He was
| referring to bainne clabair, which translates as "thick milk,"
| and was probably somewhere between just straight-up old milk and
| sour cream.
|
| Today, "bainne clabair" ("soured milk" according to wikipedia:
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Clabber_(food)) is called clabber.
| It's basically a kind of very acidic yogurt made with mesophilic
| (room temperature) fermentation by the lactic acid bacteria that
| are naturally present in raw milk. You just leave a jar of raw
| milk out for the night and in the morning, you enjoy your
| clabber.
|
| Or get food poisoning, if you're unlucky :P
|
| Edit - you can also make clabber, more safely, with kefir and
| pasteurised milk. Kefir normally makes a kind of very runny
| yogurt but, depending on the milk, you can get a very firm yogurt
| instead. In my experience, non-homogenised milk of good quality
| (preferrably from grass-fed cows) and, interestingly, UHT milk,
| clabber well. UHT milk kind of makes more sense: it's already
| undergone the heat treatment necessary to make yogurt and all
| it's missing is the acid produced by lactic acid bacteria.
| Normally, this is done relatively quickly by thermophilic
| bacteria (Lactobacilus Bulgaricus and Streptococcus thermophilus)
| at 45 degrees C, but a longer fermentation at room temperature
| with mesophilic strains can have the same effect. I, anyway, have
| made plenty of kefir-clabber this way, and also a few cheeses. If
| you collect the clabber and drain it in a cheesecloth, you can
| then form it and even age it. I've aged a couple of (tiny) wheels
| for up to four months and they were not bad, just a bit strong.
| twobitshifter wrote:
| It's mentioned in passing but my understanding is that parsnips
| were much much more popular.
| nly wrote:
| Fun Irish fact: pubs in Ireland are closed on St Patrick's Day.
|
| There's also a variety of delicious, regional potato based
| products that, until very recently, you won't have found anywhere
| else but in Ireland. The way boxty is made for instance, is crazy
| to me.
| Mongey wrote:
| pubs in Ireland are not closed on St. Patricks day.
| spacec0wb0y wrote:
| Yes, and no turkeys are consumed at thanksgiving and no music
| is played at mardi gras.
| another-dave wrote:
| This reminds me of that thing where people read the newspaper &
| say "wow, I can't believe they got $MY_AREA_OF_EXPERTISE so
| wrong" but then turn the page & take in other stories as if
| they were gospel truth.
|
| Next time someone tells me a fun fact about another country I
| shall remember the 'closed pubs' of Ireland on Paddy's Day!
| nly wrote:
| Yeah, I clearly misremembered/mistrusted what my partner
| (Irish) told me and paid the karma cost :) Oh well.
| agustif wrote:
| > "wow, I can't believe they got $MY_AREA_OF_EXPERTISE so
| wrong"
|
| Gell-Mann amnesia effect
| john-n wrote:
| Not sure where you got this from, but this is entirely
| incorrect.
| raffraffraff wrote:
| Probably confused it with Good Friday, another big day on the
| Catholic calendar.
| paleotrope wrote:
| Potato pancakes? Those seem pretty common around the world.
|
| I looked up some recipes and I am not sure I understand what it
| considered special about them.
| implements wrote:
| It's a good way to use potato and flour, and makes a nice
| breakfast fried in butter alongside an egg.
| rat87 wrote:
| seems outdated
|
| https://www.irishcentral.com/roots/history/all-pubs-ireland-...
|
| You may be surprised to learn that all the pubs in Ireland used
| to be closed on St. Patrick's Day, which is now by and large
| considered a drinking holiday.
|
| Up until the 1970s, Irish law prohibited pubs opening on March
| 17 as a mark of respect for this religious day. It was feared
| that leaving the pubs open would be too tempting for some
| during Lent and would lead to a disrespectful amount of
| drunkenness on this most solemn day.
| annamargot wrote:
| Your fun fact is hilarious from an American perspective. It's
| the biggest day for bars and pubs in the US and it's not close.
|
| It's funny how Irish culture in America seems so different from
| its motherland counterpart. Same or more so for Italian. No
| judgements either way. Just interesting how diaspora cultures
| evolve
| nly wrote:
| Well, just because the pubs are closed it doesn't mean they
| don't drink.
|
| I'm unsure if it's true, but I've been told one reason racing
| is popular on St Pats is because the tracks serve alcohol.
| GeneralTspoon wrote:
| This whole thing is nonsense - pubs aren't closed. And most
| people aren't anywhere near a race track on St. Patricks's
| Day. Unless they're in Cheltenham, which is in a different
| country.
| GeneralTspoon wrote:
| This "fact" isn't a fact. Pubs aren't anywhere near closed in
| Ireland on St. Patrick's day.
|
| It's probably the busiest day of the year for them.
| disgruntledphd2 wrote:
| So, this was true until the 30's or so.
|
| So it's possible that this was passed down the generations
| as fact. It's not true any more though.
| basisword wrote:
| Only a guess but this would likely have been because St.
| Patrick's Day is a "holy day". People attend church (lots
| still do although in the last couple of decades it's
| declined massively) and closing pubs would be in line
| with how some other "holy days" are treated. An example
| of this is Easter in Northern Ireland. There are still
| some relatively strict licensing laws over the Easter
| weekend (although these are about to modernise) with pubs
| shit for large parts of it.
| secondcoming wrote:
| The most obvious difference is that it seems to be called St
| Patty's Day in the US, for some reason. Nobody in Ireland
| calls it that.
| DFHippie wrote:
| And people call it St Patrick's day in the US as well.
| ac29 wrote:
| > Your fun fact is hilarious from an American perspective.
| It's the biggest day for bars and pubs in the US and it's not
| close.
|
| Must be a regional thing. Its not like that where I live, and
| a quick search suggests both New Years Eve and Thanksgiving
| Eve are busier days (which matches my experience).
| loonster wrote:
| Anyone know of a good milk recipe book?
| fy20 wrote:
| > There was drinking milk, and buttermilk, and fresh curds, and
| old curds, and something called "real curds," and whey mixed with
| water to make a refreshing sour drink
|
| This sounds a lot like Lithuania today. If you go into most
| supermarkets the milk products section is usually bigger than the
| produce section.
|
| They also like potatoes. Usually served with milk products...
| loonster wrote:
| Great read,Thanks.
| andygrd wrote:
| This whole thread is straying very close to a lot of anti-Irish
| racist tropes.
| [deleted]
| beaconstudios wrote:
| > from the 12th century on, there are records of butter flavored
| with onion and garlic, and local traditions of burying butter in
| bogs.
|
| > Grains, either as bread or porridge, were the other mainstay of
| the pre-potato Irish diet
|
| What's your favourite Irish food? Mind's garlic bread.
| jasonhansel wrote:
| > As traditional as it seems, the Irish Soda Bread that you might
| be trundling out this weekend wasn't invented until 19th century,
| since baking soda wasn't invented until the 1850s.
|
| Interesting fact: prior to the development of baking soda,
| ammonium (specifically, ammonium carbonate) was a commonly used
| leavening agent for cookies and crackers. It was obtained by
| distilling ground-up deer antlers, giving it the traditional name
| "salt of hartshorn".
| weatherlight wrote:
| Guess which country is tied for dead last. (Lactose intolerance)
|
| https://worldpopulationreview.com/country-rankings/lactose-i...
| Daub wrote:
| Ireland is also the world leader in Coeliac disease.
| secondcoming wrote:
| I thought it might be Viking related, but Norway has three
| times the levels of intolerance as Denmark.
| 3np wrote:
| I always wrote it down to generally large intake of fresh
| milk and dairy. Norway has more mountains and less pastures
| compared to Denmark and Sweden.
| spurgu wrote:
| Quite surprised Finland isn't in the top 10, it has similar
| historical importance here.
| boomboomsubban wrote:
| The source for that page has a much better layout, and shows
| Finland at 12th. There seems to be a separate lactose
| intolerance that also affects people starting when they are
| infants and it's most common in Finland.
|
| https://milk.procon.org/lactose-intolerance-by-country/
| hn_throwaway_99 wrote:
| Wow, expected to see those other Northern European countries up
| at the top of the lactose tolerance list, but was surprised to
| see Niger. Googling brought up some interesting data on how
| lactase persistence was selected for in Africa.
| chrisco255 wrote:
| The lists are based on intolerance not tolerance, so the top
| list is inverted. This depicts the percentage of each
| population that is lactose intolerant, so Denmark and Ireland
| are among the top countries in the world for lactose
| tolerance:
|
| Denmark - 4% Ireland - 4% Sweden - 7% United Kingdom - 8% New
| Zealand - 10% Netherlands - 12% Norway - 12% Niger - 13%
| Belgium - 15% Cyprus - 16%
| tummybug wrote:
| I'm Irish, there still exists a lot of pride for potatoes here. I
| have a small allotment here as part of a communal garden and each
| spring there is probably more excitement about the potatoes crops
| than any other. People want to know what types you are planting,
| how early to put them down, tips for managing damage from a late
| frost etc. Not to mention it really is a productive crop and
| really can last all winter when stored correctly and you can be
| self sufficient for "spuds" from a relatively small sized plot.
| throwawaymanbot wrote:
| Floury Irish potato varieties are among the best in the world.
| Once you taste them you can't go back to waxy potatoes.
| chrisseaton wrote:
| You have a potato theme park don't you?
| knolan wrote:
| It's a potato crisp (US:chip) theme park.
|
| https://taytopark.ie/
| xor99 wrote:
| Tayto was the first/one of to infuse the flavour into the
| crisp (US:chip). Before that there were little salt packets
| that you sprinkled. The guy who invented the process was
| nicknamed "Spud" Murphy.
| throwawaymanbot wrote:
| Taytos cheese and Onion crisps are the finest Potato chip I
| have ever eaten.
| ramesh31 wrote:
| The population of Ireland was actually greater in 1840 than it is
| today [0]. It's hard to overstate just what a catastrophic event
| the potato famine was.
|
| [0]
| https://www.mapspictures.com/ireland/history/ireland_populat...
| fouc wrote:
| > McDonald's fries to dip in your Shamrock Shake
|
| I briefly thought a Shamrock Shake was gonna be gravy flavored.
| Anyone think a gravy flavored shake could work?
| gaganyaan wrote:
| I think a gravy-flavored shake is just called gravy
| kupopuffs wrote:
| Is there ice cream in normal gravy???
| thaumasiotes wrote:
| There's plenty of fat in gravy. There's water. It's served
| warm, so the water is not ice, but what more do you want?
| webwielder2 wrote:
| I read in the book 1493 that the Irish were basically the
| healthiest Europeans post-potato and pre-famine because
| potatoes+milk is as nutritionally complete a diet as you could
| find.
| redis_mlc wrote:
| When the Irish (and I think Scots) went to university back in
| the day, they took a barrel of potatoes with them for the
| semester as their "meal plan."
|
| So they ate potatoes two to three times per day, every day.
| jamil7 wrote:
| > because potatoes+milk is as nutritionally complete a diet as
| you could find.
|
| That can't be true.
| TheSpiceIsLife wrote:
| If we limit the scope to macronutriens it is indeed correct.
|
| If you could choose only one food to eat, potatoes would be a
| wise choice. Every other single food will cause you to become
| deficient much more quickly.
|
| Disclosure: studied nutritional medicine
| chrisco255 wrote:
| No, ruminant meat such as beef or steak or even fatty fish
| such as salmon is a far more complete source of nutrition.
| Pre-agricultural humans lived almost exclusively on meat
| for hundreds of thousands of years. Potatoes lack certain
| essential nutrients meat does not, such as Vitamin D,
| Vitamin K, heme iron, zinc, omega 3s, etc.
|
| Our bodies are highly adapted and evolved for meat only
| diets: https://www.timesofisrael.com/for-2-million-years-
| humans-ate...
| NoImmatureAdHom wrote:
| Yep.
| TheSpiceIsLife wrote:
| When you say "meat" you probably mean all the edible
| parts of an animal, organs meat.
|
| Then I would probably agree.
| rsj_hn wrote:
| Yeah, when we talk of traditional societies eating meat,
| it wasn't just ribeye and potatoes. Liver, bone marrow,
| brains -- all of that was consumed and these contain a
| lot of nutrition that you don't replicate with a steady
| diet of filet mignon. It's a shame how Americans no
| longer eat liver.
| Tagbert wrote:
| You seem to be ignoring the "gatherer" half of "hunter-
| gatherer". I've seen no widespread acceptance that pre-
| agricultural people ate only meat. They would have eaten
| a large number of plants, nuts, roots, fruits as well as
| insects and anything else they could find. You can find
| this in coprolites preserved in habitable caves.
| chrisco255 wrote:
| No, the name hunter-gatherer does not imply that 50% of
| the calories were obtained from plants.
|
| I linked to an article explaining that point, which
| includes the source and evidence.
|
| Especially during the deep glacial periods of the ice
| age, which was most of the last 1 million years, humans
| sustained themselves almost entirely on meat.
| i_am_proteus wrote:
| Better potatoes than the flesh of a pastured ruminant?
| Linosaurus wrote:
| You'd need some added restraints to make it possibly
| plausible. 'Best among affordable 2-food diets', maybe. Which
| is quite different.
| silisili wrote:
| Rather interesting, I remember reading that humans could
| generally survive off a diet of only milk and potatoes years ago.
| Of course sarcastically I immediately thought 'mashed potatoes
| are a superfood then.'
|
| Can't find the exact source now, but this one will do -
| https://www.straightdope.com/21343924/could-i-survive-on-not...
| helsinkiandrew wrote:
| I thought that all Northern European food has been highly milk
| based for thousands of years, hence the Roman insult of "Butter
| eaters":
|
| https://www.atlasobscura.com/articles/history-of-milk
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=28532968
| igammarays wrote:
| Also: It was butter, the Japanese thought, which made Europeans
| so peculiarly rank: bata-kusai they called them (using the
| English word for the foul substance): "butter-stinkers." The
| terms Bata-kusai, "stinking of butter," is still a derogatory
| term for things obnoxiously Western.
|
| > http://www.webexhibits.org/butter/countries-japan.html
| WalterBright wrote:
| People smell like what they eat. People who eat the same
| stuff you do, don't notice that you smell.
| maxerickson wrote:
| Europeans also tend to have more apocrine sweat glands than
| Asians.
|
| https://www.discovermagazine.com/planet-earth/body-odor-
| asia...
| biofox wrote:
| Well... now I feel extremely self conscious.
| loonster wrote:
| I used to work with a very obese man doing blue collar
| work. When he sweats, he smelled like a deep frier.
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