Comments on: Cry Havoc, and Let Slip the Spuds of War

By: JarvisLoop

JarvisLoop — Tue, 25 Aug 2020 01:44:01 +0000

Checking back in.

By: JarvisLoop

JarvisLoop — Tue, 03 Mar 2020 23:46:46 +0000

I am still thankful.

By: JarvisLoop

JarvisLoop — Sat, 30 Nov 2019 02:19:09 +0000

And yesterday was the day to appreciate this country’s abundance. I thank God every day that I live when and where I do.

By: JarvisLoop

JarvisLoop — Thu, 11 Apr 2019 00:29:05 +0000

Mr. Macfarlane has surpassed himself – superb article.

On a different note, articles about hunger fascinate me. In a short time, Europe and the U.S. have gone from worrying about having enough to eat to worrying about being overweight. We are living in wonderful times.

By: Naii S.

Naii S. — Tue, 02 Aug 2016 03:32:53 +0000

Wait, why “French Fries” then? Or is that a totally different story?
DI indeeeeeed.

By: Tobias

Tobias — Wed, 07 Oct 2015 14:57:36 +0000

Mention of Titanic above reminded me that Parmentier also received one other little moment of fame. One of the side dishes on the First Class menu on Titanic was ‘Parmentier potatoes’.

By: Remarksman

Remarksman — Mon, 06 Apr 2015 04:23:25 +0000

Nice article — I’m consistently enjoying the writing on this site.

My high school history passed over the Irish Potato Famine with about the same depth as this article’s sentence, “So reliable was [the potato] that in Ireland […] a simple potato fungus in 1845 was able to cause […] “total and utter catastrophe killing over a million people and depopulating the island by a quarter through death and emigration.””

I know the Irish Potato Famine was bad, but I’ve recently seen some mentions that there was plenty of other food available in Ireland at the time, but in the form of crops and animals primarily grown for export. The Irish poor could not match the market prices for the export items, so that food was all sent away.

While the simplistic perspective provides a good lesson about the risks of monocultural crops, I wonder if there might be a “Damn Interesting” story to be found in a wider lense/deeper dive look at the Irish Potato Famine.

By: david

david — Mon, 16 Feb 2015 12:30:03 +0000

At the heart of the tragedy that we know as the Titanic lies the Potato Famine in Ireland. There was only a famine because the entire crop came from one genus and had others been available this disaster might have been mitigated.
So great was the exodus of Irish nationals, leaving to find a new life in America that the White Star line saw a business opportunity.
The Titanic was not the only vessel on this run. It is commonly thought that she was a luxury liner but the real trade was in the emigration from the Emerald Isle.
The cabins were poky and small and following the dispersal of the Irish to America via Ellis Island, these cabins were all stripped out of their scanty furnishings and used for freight back to England.
Following the sinking of the Titanic there was the usual board of enquiry. It found that the vessel had been incorrectly classified and this led to a major revision of the construction rules for such vessels.
All this from the humble potato.

By: J. A. Macfarlane

J. A. Macfarlane — Wed, 21 May 2014 19:34:58 +0000

eleys said:

Perhaps I might have better expressed it as ‘little known outside of France’ rather than ‘outside of French history textbooks’, which I hoped would get that point across. I was forgetting that history isn’t necessarily taught any longer and that it therefore couldn’t be assumed that everyone in France would have heard that.

As for the hâchis, however, I can only hang my head in shame. This is what comes of mostly using Italian cookbooks.

By: eleys

eleys — Tue, 13 May 2014 04:04:19 +0000

Sophie said: “Parmentier is not remembered in the name of the potato, but a delicious gratin dish is named “hachis parmentier”. It’s a layer of seasoned minced meat (often leftovers) covered with a layer of mashed potatoes, a little bit of grated cheese, and put to grill in an oven.”

You are right and the end of the post is completely false… Which feels really strange because It was an awesome read. I loved it, right to the point where “french people don t know parmentier”. The hachis parmentier is an extremely popular dish and everyone here knows where the name came from.
This was the only part of the text that I can fact check, and it’s erroneous… Too bad, because now I feel like I shoud doubt the rest of the text as well.