We Still Eat This All The Time - Scallop Potatoes 

Resident plant pathologist here: Potato blight is neither a fungus nor a bacteria. The pathogen itself is phytophthora infestans which is what is known as an oomycete. Very similar in structure and function to a fungus but biochemically a bit more similar to an algae. Phytophthoras do persist in the soil and can survive for years until soil conditions and a suitable host come around. Its a pretty tough pest to deal with.

Missed opportunity to say Potatoes, boil em, mash em, stick em in a stew...

Sadly with the way English administration treated the Irish, potato really was the only choice for most. Top that with the British government using Malthusian theories on calamities being a natural element of human development as excuses to not help them during the famine.

Potatoes weren't the cash crop in Ireland. The cash crop was wheat, most of which was exported to Britain. Potatoes were what was grown on the smallholdings, to feed the family

It wasn't a cash crop, those were still being sold by the overlords while everyone else starved

0:18 Or, as in Ireland, it is the only crop that their landlord allows them to grow. And then the landlords continued to export the remaining potatoes to England during the Great Hunger/Potato Famine because profit was more important than lives.

When we were homeless one of the most useful things we were given was a huge jar of instant mashed potatoes. It wasn't much, but all we needed was some water and we could put food in our stomachs and the jar made it last a long time so it was a relief for a chunk of time.

The famine was caused by the economic system in place where Catholic Irish were forced tenants of mostly Protestant Anglo-Irish Landlords. Under that system, any money made from labouring on the large farms growing other crops like grain was taken to pay the rent, and the tenant farmers had to grow their own food to feed their families on the tiny patches of land allotted to them, which meant only the most calorie efficient food would meet the needs of their families. This meant using the Lumper variety of potato that had huge productivity in Irish soils, and most Irish peasants lived on a diet of almost entirely Lumper potatoes and buttermilk. This led to disaster because the genetic uniformity of the Lumper meant it was especially vulnerable to the rapid spread of blight. The potato crop failed, but Ireland was still exporting food to Britain, so the famine, like all famines, existed partially because of an upset in the environment but mostly because of the economic and political systems in place. The famine was a total demographic catastrophe for Ireland, resulting in a massive loss of population due to starvation and mostly emigration. Irish language speakers were especially targeted and pushed to emigrate, which nearly killed the language off. The population dropped from 8 million to 2.4 million at it's lowest point, and to this day Ireland is one of the only countries in the world where the population now is less than the population in 1840. This was entirely because the political administration of Ireland from the UK was incompetent. It fed pro-independence sentiment and is probably why Ireland is no longer part of the UK today.

There's an interesting book that was published recently called Atlas of the Irish Revolution It had several dozen contributing scholars and probably hundreds of original images, and the first section had maps discussing the scale of the Great Famine. Several counties around Galway and Cork had 90% death rates. Not malnourishment rates, _death_ rates. If even the remaining people had enough energy to burn and bury the dead, there was probably too many of them for the malnourished survivors to handle. It's hard to fathom going through something like that. Ireland remains the only country in the world with a lower population than it had in 1850.

The Hunger in Ireland was mostly manufactured, but there was a genuine food shortage in a number of other areas, such as Prussia.

It is interesting to learn that they had scallop potatoes back then, and we have scalloped potatoes now, but they are two different things.

The Irish get a bit tetchy if you call it the potato famine. They call it The Great Hunger. It truly was appaling. There's a very good book called Black Potatoes by Susan Campbell Bartoletti which goes into the harrowing details.

My grandmother had interesting ways to cook potatoes. She would peel and dice them. Put them in a pot with salt, butter and water to cover. Cook them almost as a soup and serve. She would then make mashed potatoes from those leftovers. Because they had a broth you could stretch your milk. She would also add flour onions and an egg to mashed potatoes and make latkes with them. Potatoes are versatile in leftovers to help keep you from getting bored eating the same things over and over.

Technically the blight caused crop failures but the British caused the famine

It wasn’t just the failure, it was English policies that amplified the issue to what it was.

As a youngster, I picked my share of turned-up potatoes off the ground to earn some spare change. My uncles were developing a very large agri-business and one of them told me a good bit about potato nutrition. This was at a time when 'experts' were saying potatoes were 'bad' due to their carbohydrate content. Those experts ignored all of the minerals and whatever were along for the ride. I'm baking skin-on potatoes for dinner tonight!

I really feel identified when you said “if you have ever been in a situation where things are a little tight “

I harvested 1000lbs. of russets from the garden last year, and they are still holding nicely in the root cellar. Winters are long where I live, and potatoes warm the soul. My cows love them, too.

My family has been here in rural Vermont for generations, every farm (including ours) had a potato patch that was far away from any settlements, usual off in the woods. The idea was to escape the blight by isolation.

Ive never met a single person who likes potatoes say they were tired of potatoes lol

My big treat as a kid was when my father was reheating mashed potatoes on frying pan. He always made big pancake out of it, make both sides brown. And I scrape scrispy parts for myself.

Left over Mashed potatoes can also become so many other dishes: potato soup, latkes, fish patties and so much more. I only peel my potatoes if they are old (shriveled), or starting to go a little green (pared down to clean center), as the skin has a lot of nutrients. Shredded carrots, minced broccoli florets, minced and sautéed onions, parsnips or rutabaga if affordable, shredded cheese... Yes all high end but so much nicer to look at and taste.

Pirogi are another fantastic potato dish. It’s a traditional polish dish of cottage cheese potato and onion inside an egg noodle - boiled and then fried with onion

To spice up you mash even more add some garlic and freshly ground black pepper. Very simple and easy and not something they would not have access to. But it makes a BIG difference! You could even add ... nutmeg.

Now, people can easily take farmers for granted. If crops fail, that affects us all. I'm originally from a very large farm in Alberta, so I know how important farmers are. I like gardening, and one year I had blight on tomatoes I was growing. Different things can affect how well crops turn out. That, in turn, influences how we eat. Cheers!

While I cannot speak to whether or not blight will stay in the soil, it definitely stays on and contaminates any seed potatoes that grow during the blight. And one should never try to use those contaminated potatoes or it will keep the blight going - ruining more crops.

I feel like everyone just peels potatoes because everyone peels potatoes. They're much better with the skin on.

Great job, Ryan! You included a lot of information in 10 & 1/2 minutes along with 3 options for potatoes to add variety to what many of us see as a staple. Thank you for this excellent installment!

What's taters, Precious?

I would eat potatoes for eternity,when I used to be a kid my grandma would give me boiled potatoes when I got hurt and eversince then,I have this sense of safety atached to potatoes,which makes me want to eat them forever

Ireland use to have trees and forest everywhere just like Scotland. The English enslaved them, clear cut there land, then. Forced them to grow export good on an industrial scale. They would have never been effected by the potato famen had they not only been forced to growing for production

I have Irish Catholic ancestors who came to America because of the potato famine. In Ireland, at least, it was the Catholics who were the worse affected because they almost entirely relied on the potato for food while the Protestants had more food and a variety of crops. It’s really sad. I love potatoes and figure it’s in my Irish, Scandinavian, and German heritage, lol. There’s no way to cook a potato that I won’t like. Wonderful video!

Yes, diseases can survive in the soil, if it doesn't get hot enough to sterlize your soil. That's why they reccomend you don't put kitty litter in your compost, and why you should keep the neighborhood cats, out of your freshly dug garden.

This thumbnail and description works better than the original posted earlier. The video was solid but the connection with famine was a bit clumsy. Well done with the change. :-)

Awesome session. As always you are very informative about foods in the 18th and 19th century. Appreciate your talent and your channel :)

In 1860's in Finland there was similar famine. It was caused by long winter the whole decade was basically cold and miserable weather and nothing grew. I don't remember what was the reason for this weather but it killed a huge amount of Finnish population, so much so that it has effects on Finnish population this day.

I love to make Jansson's Temptation, which is a Swedish potato casserole. The traditional recipe has pickled herring and anchovies but my family puts bacon in there instead. It's full of onions, butter, and cream.

One simply cannot beat a good old spud. 🥔

Calling the English a Blight, and how they stay in the soil is weird, but accurate.

I would love a revision of this topic but with more detailed history on the cause of the famin as it was a huge reason for American irish existing now,! Huge respect to townsends channel and all involved! Sláinte from Ireland

Fantastic. Really goes to show how limitless the possibilities for even the humble potato are. Thanks Ryan and team!

If you want to add some extra goodness to your potato dishes, eat them with milk, sour cream, yogurt, kefir, buttermilk or curdled milk. Such products go extremely well with potatoes, plus they cover nutrient needs potatoes can't.

Love your channel. I watch these videos often as appetizers before preparing food myself. I’ve started growing lettuce, tomatoes, potatoes and herbs in a garden myself, too. You have a really good narrating voice, too. Keep it up

Been watching this channel a long time. The first few times he was a solo host it was clear he wasn't as comfortable with it, still figuring out his approach. I'm not sure at what point that shifted, but I was thinking during this video that he's really adapt at it now and with his own and his solo videos seem very natural.

Love me some potato dishes.

Peeling before boiling results in a loss nutrients.

Potatoes are a staple in my house. If there’s a side dish, its some form of potato, rice, or noodle dish. There’s just so many ways to prepare potatoes! My favorite is twice baked.

Thank you Townsends

I'm from Ontario and I can never get enough of mash potatoes. Anyone who's only had the powdered stuff are missing out. Also it's wild to see the origin of scalloped potatoes. I always assumed that scalloping was just another word for slicing and didn't have anything to do with literal scallops.

One of my favorite meals is a baked potato with broccoli and cheese sauce. A little sour cream on top. That's the whole meal. Very filling.

tomato blight absolutely stays in the soil

When I was in my early 20's and living on my own, there was a period of about 4 years where I lived of potatoes, and if I had a few extra dollars, I would buy a pound of ground beef. I had mashed potatoes 4 or 5 times a week. A 20 pound sack lasted a week. Sometimes, I bought white rice and pinto beans. I understand being poor, I really can relate to the people of that time.

Good morning, Townsends! Love your show❤

Looks great! Great history! Still the best channel on RU-vid!

I was able to meet Ryan in person at the fort loudon market fair in Pennsylvania this weekend. Great person he's exactly the guy on the videos. 💯 class act.

Made me hungry. I had to go and fry up some potatoes (Yukon Gold sliced thin and pan fried in duck fat, leftover bacon, chives fresh from the garden, with some sour cream on top). Delish!

Important note about the British response to the Great Hunger in Ireland: During the famine, an election switched which party had the majority in Parliament, and thus controlled the government. The Peel government (started as Tories, then broke off to form the Peelites) was at least trying to fix the problem, but they lost, and the Whig government under Lord Russell basically canceled food relief for the Irish poor, then started a new programme run by Charles Trevelyan, a man who thought Irish people starving was 'the judgement of God' that 'must not be too mitigated.'

As a farm kid, potatoes were pretty much a daily food - baked, pan fried, mashed, boiled, fries, hashbrowns, etc. When I moved out on my own, it stayed like that - it is a staple that you didn't think twice about. One of the hardest things for me to do as a Type 2 diabetic was to stop eating potatoes as the starch turned too quickly and spikes by blood - now they are an occasional treat. But that transition away from them was hard because that is what I ate regularly, the idea of not having potatoes with meals was foreign.

the scalloped potato is interesting because I grew up in the PNW and "scallop" was a way to cut a potato, and not a dish in and of itself. "Scalloped" potatoes are the thin cuts like the first dish. About 1/4 inch thick, too thick for a potato chip.

Have been following your channel here and there for a few years and this fellow is looking really good these days!

I always look forward to seeing your videos. Keep up the good work.

When I was a kid, one of the ways my mom would use leftover mashed potatoes is potato patties....mashed potatoes with minced onion, formed into a burger-sized patty and fried on both sides in a skillet until a light skin/crust formed. Really tasty!

Unless the skins are really horrible, I don't peel potatoes. The skin has the most flavour, and just below the skin has the most nutrients. My favourite potato is "potato in the jacket", i.e. baked in the oven with the skin on. (Served with butter melted on top, and a sprinkle of salt and pepper, sour cream and chives!). These days we can shorten the cooking time by cooking in a microwave oven until the potatoes just start to soften.

We love potatoes and eat them with almost every meal. There are many ways to prepare them and we never get tired of them.

Thank you for this episode. Makes appreciate more of the food we are having around the house. ❤

Mashed potato with a small amount of yellow mustard blended in, adds a mild sharpness... or melt some cheese on or in it...

In Switzerland we put nutmeg in our mashed potatos. 😋

Might as well face it, you're addicted to spuds.

an interesting thing about the migration was that alot of Irish were heading to Australia because there was a gold rush happening

When were Jerusalem artichokes (sunchokes) introduced here in America? Those things are very hardy and are a great cold weather crop. They're also invasive and once they take over they grow non-stop.

Ryan, Thanks for the amazing video. Be Safe and Take Care!

The scallop potato looks wonderful. I bet a bit of shredded cheddar, mixed in, would be lovely!

Ryan is making my mouth water this morning🤤 My potatoes are in the crock pot for Sunday roast.

I know the introduction is meant well, but i think the sociopolitical causes of famines are really really important to highlight when talking about them. Almost always, famines are caused by wealth hoarding and manipulation of crops for profit. There are very few places where only a couple things will grow and Ireland existed a very long time before potatoes were introduced and then manipulated into a cash crop/cheap feed for the English. Many have already brought it up, but it feels remiss to not mention that these mass starvations and mass exoduses were the result of violent oppression of the working/peasant/colonised class. There is enough food in the world to feed everyone, but those in power refuse to share it.

Modern famines have only really been eliminated in the developed world because they have the capital to import food to account for even major agricultural disasters. This isn't the case today in many countries and famines and droughts still kill countless people even today in the less developed world.

The Irish potato blight actually wasn't a bacteria or fungus, it was a protist. Specifically, a water mold

Very well articulated. Great video

Here in Australia, depending where you are, 'potato scallops' are a thin slice of potato, battered and deep fried. My favourite snack from a Fish&Chip shop! I think the term is used similarly in parts of northern England.

A few little errors or assumptions still made about the famine in Ireland that this video falls into some of this unfortunately. One is that there wasnt enough food to feed the population in ireland due to the failure of the potato crops. There was more than enough food indeed food exports out of ireland increased to britain over this period like livestock and other crops. Also there was suitable solutions to greatly reduce the suffering but the crises was mostly ignored early on and while some paltry effort was made to supply a mediocre sort of subsistance food it was based on degrading and humiliation further of the irish underclass. Many attempts at delivering relief were indeed blocked from coming into irish ports by the british. It was an ethnic cleansing at its core. Still love your channel though its top notch most of the time. 😊

The last one looks like an interesting ancestor of potato duchesse (it's generally piped into mounds and then baked for that crust). Cream and butter is mainly how I'm used to mashed potatoes, I'll admit. A nice, rich *thick* one.

Yum! Last recipe I'd like to try. That looks GOOD!!! Heavy cream? Sounds delicious!

The British did setup workhouses and some sort of food relief for the Irish during this time. The kicker though was that if you were in possession of 1/4th of an acre of land you were disqualified from all "relief" programs. And that land was being used to grow the cereal crops that paid their rent to the landlords. Of course, this also led to increased crime, but there were few arrests ever made

In continental Europe, people adopted potatoes for eating fastest in areas that often had armies marching through. You can keep a potato in the ground for a longer time into the cold than you can with a grain and so you could delay a potato harvest if needed therefore potatoes were less likely to be foraged by an army, because soldiers aren't gonna bother digging the whole crop up but they might take your whole harvest out of your granary if you grew grain.

Mashed potatoes made with milk taste like paper. Making it with heavy cream and butter allows the potato flavor to shine through. Scalloped potatoes of today (at least in the south) involve cutting the potatoes into tiny slices or cubes, rather than mashing.

I've seen a very old book, I think from 1900 or earlier, in my local library, that had a variety of recepies for cheaper dishes. I did not ever got to read it, it was not of my interests at the time (I was 7 or 8). It was called "100 good meals for your family" (but in an antiquated Brazilian Portuguese). I remember that from the 100 recepies available, 40 were something to do with potatoes, and 25 with eggs. My region has an agricultural background, pretty much everyone had chickens and a patch of land with some corn, potatoes or casava and a lot of veggies, so eggs were not expensive when that book was written.

Samwise Gamgee enters the chat "Boil 'em, mash 'em, stick 'em in a stew!"

I have _never_ been sick of potatoes. In fact, I have to limit myself from eating them all the time lol

Looks good. I may have to try making the fried potatoes. Thanks for the info.

Good mashed potatos make many a meal. If you're looking for something a little different, add in some orange sweet potatos (about 2-1 regular to sweet) mash all together with a little salt, butter and milk, then stir in some finely chopped green onions/scallions/spring onions (they seem to be called slightly different things in different places) and put back on the lowest heat possible just to warm up a bit. Great with any meat/vege/gravy meal.

Always fun and informative

another nice thing about potatoes is, during wartime, the roots are below the ground, when the troops can march all over them and the food is safe

I currently am living off of potatoes because it’s all I can afford.

Great presenter ! Well researched

That scallop dish is a very specific thing I've never seen before, but I'm definitely excited to try that in some ramekins my next special occasion.

Hot topic Jon & Ryan (Real Hot Potato)🤦🏼‍♀️

Just wonderful content.

Great job Ryan. Maybe it’s your Irish name. I usually eat sweet potatoes and yams, but I’m definitely making all of these. This is a wonderful channel.

Thanks for sharing the recipes from long ago Ryan. I too was raised on the mashed potatoes and the fried potatoes minus the sugar. The old time version of scalloped potatoes were replaced with the version we are familiar with today and then the au-gratin potatoes came along but we didn't have the cheese for those potatoes and I still don't like them because of the cheese on them. Thanks also for the history lesson of the Irish Famine . Stay safe and keep up the great videos and fun you have around there. Fred.

One thing I’m reminded about potato diets is that when Billy Bob Thornton came to Hollywood he was very poor and ate potatoes for so long, and nothing else, he got myocarditis. Also didn’t McDonald’s used to spray their French fries with a sugar solution to caramelized them better?

Great video, as always! Perhaps, had the Great Hunger not occured, many of us in the southeast would not be here today.