{"id":4343,"date":"2015-02-09T16:24:34","date_gmt":"2015-02-09T15:24:34","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.culturedallroundman.com\/?p=4343"},"modified":"2022-03-08T17:17:31","modified_gmt":"2022-03-08T16:17:31","slug":"cultural-history-potato-earth-apple","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/culturedarm.com\/staging\/5793\/cultural-history-potato-earth-apple\/","title":{"rendered":"A Cultural History of the Potato as Earth Apple"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"VanGoghPotatoCover1\"<\/a><\/p>\n

The etymology of the word \u2018apple\u2019<\/a> takes us back to the Early Middle Ages, when it appeared in various related forms across the Germanic languages: as \u2018apful\u2019\/\u2019aphul\u2019 or \u2018apfel\u2019\/\u2019aphel\u2019 in Old High German, \u2018appel\u2019 in Old Frisian, \u2018appul\u2019 in Old Saxon, \u2018epli\u2019 in Old Icelandic,\u00a0\u2018\u00e6pl\u00e6\u2019 or \u2018\u00e6p\u00e6l\u2019 in Old Danish, and so on. At the time, the word referred sometimes to the fruit we call \u2018apple\u2019 today; occasionally to the pomegranate; but often it referred broadly to any round fruit which happened to grow on a tree.<\/p>\n

In Old High German, and on into Old English and Middle Dutch, the term \u2018earth apple\u2019 (\u2018erdaphul\u2019, \u2018eor\u00f0\u00e6pla\u2019, \u2018erdappel\u2019) came to be used<\/a> to refer \u2013 in addition to the mandrake and cyclamen plants \u2013 to types of cucumber and melon. \u2018Eor\u00f0\u00e6pla\u2019 appears in this context, for instance, in the Old English Hexateuch<\/a>: the earliest English manuscript\u00a0of the first six books of the Old Testament, which contains more than 400 illustrations, and dates from the middle of the 11th century. The manuscript contains a sentence which states, \u2018We h\u00e6fdon cucumeres, \u00fe\u00e6t sind eor\u00f0\u00e6pla, & pepones\u2019.<\/p>\n

The common potato\u00a0had been cultivated in\u00a0the Peruvian and Bolivian Altiplano from as far back as 8000 BC, and went on to become the staple food of the region throughout the period of the Inca Empire. By way of Spanish explorers returning from the Andes, it was introduced to Europe around the middle of the 16th century.\u00a0In fact, the first explicit reference to the potato within European literature is credited to the Spanish conquistador\u00a0Pedro Cieza de Le\u00f3n<\/a>, whose chronicles of Peru,\u00a0Cr\u00f3nicas del Per\u00fa<\/i>, were first\u00a0published in 1553; yet by 1567 potatoes had arrived in Antwerp, and by the beginning of the 1570s they\u00a0were being eaten regularly in Spain and beyond. The earliest extant European recipe for potatoes<\/a> comes from a German cookbook, entitled\u00a0Ein new Kochbuch<\/i>, written by Marx Rumpolt \u2013 who became head cook for the Elector of Mainz after working in Bohemia and Hungary \u2013 and published in 1581. The recipe<\/a> refers to:<\/p>\n

\u2018Earth apples.\u00a0Peel and cut them small, simmer them in water and press it well out through a fine cloth; chop them small and fry them in bacon that is cut small; take a little milk there under and let it simmer therewith so it is good and well tasting.\u2019\u00a0<\/em><\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a>
Illustration of potatoes in Carolus Clusius\u2019s Rariorum plantarum historia<\/em>, Antwerp, Officina Plantiniana, 1601<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

In 1576, the Flemish botanist Carolus Clusius published the results of his research into the rare flora of Spain, in\u00a0Rariorum aliquot stirpium per Hispanias observatarum historia<\/i><\/em>. The potato was surprisingly absent from his work<\/a>; but by 1601, when\u00a0Rariorum plantarum historia<\/i>\u00a0brought together and updated his studies of Spain and Central Europe, the potato did appear, with Clusius\u2019s description accompanied by a woodcut illustration. By this point, the potato had already been illustrated in print: in 1597, in John Gerard\u2019s <\/a>The Herball or Generall Historie of Plantes<\/a>, <\/i>which offered the first description of the potato in English; and in the 1598 herbal of the Italian Pietri Andreae Matthioli<\/a>.\u00a0However, having received\u00a0potato tubers from Belgium the previous year, in 1589 Clusius received\u00a0from the Belgian artist Philippe de Sevres<\/a> a watercolor painting of the potato plant \u2013 and this watercolour stands today, in the collection of the Museum Plantin-Moretus, Antwerp, as the first European illustration of the potato.<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a>
Watercolour by Philippe de Sevres, given to Carolus Clusius in 1589: the first European illustration of the potato. Museum Plantin-Moretus, Antwerp<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

The potato spread throughout Europe from two directions: from Spain, and also from England<\/a>, where it is alleged to have been introduced via either the seafaring Sir Francis Drake, or the astronomer and mathematician Thomas Harriot, who had travelled to the Americas in the 1580s in the company of Sir Walter Raleigh. By the beginning of the 1600s, the potato was making an appearance on the Renaissance stage. In the final act of Shakespeare\u2019s The Merry Wives of Windsor<\/em><\/a> \u2013 published in 1602, but believed to have been written before 1597 \u2013 Falstaff waits dressed as Herne the Hunter, with antlers adorning his head, in the hopes of spending \u2018a cool rut time\u2019 with Mistresses Ford and Page. When Mistress Ford addresses her \u2018male deer\u2019, Falstaff responds:<\/p>\n

\u2018My doe with the black scut! Let the sky rain<\/em>
\npotatoes; let it thunder to the tune of Green<\/em>
\nSleeves, hail kissing-comfits and snow eringoes; let<\/em>
\nthere come a tempest of provocation, I will shelter me here.\u2019<\/em><\/p>\n

But there was some confusion within the English language concerning the precise denotation of the word \u2018potato\u2019. The sweet potato had followed a markedly similar trajectory to the common potato: with its origins\u00a0in Central America and Peru from around 8000 BC, the sweet potato became\u00a0fundamental to the diet of Central America, in the process spreading across South America, to the Caribbean, and later to Polynesia. The first European contact with the sweet potato came with\u00a0Christopher Columbus\u2019s voyages to the \u2018New World\u2019 between\u00a01492 and 1503. Returning with Columbus, sweet potatoes became popular among European royalty<\/a> in the first half of the 1500s. The Spanish historian\u00a0Fern\u00e1ndez de Oviedo wrote that they tasted \u2018just like fine marzipan\u2019; while in 1565 the English naval commander Sir John Hawkins remarked that, in his opinion, they \u2018be the most delicate rootes that may be eaten, and doe far exceede our passeneps or carets\u2019.<\/p>\n

The\u00a0Ta\u00edno people of the Caribbean called the sweet potato \u2018batata\u2019, and this word was adopted for the root vegetable by the Portuguese. However, in Spain, \u2018batata\u2019 soon became conflated with \u2018papa\u2019 \u2013 the word in the Quechuan language, spoken in the Andes, for the common potato. The result was that in\u00a0Spanish, the common potato came to be referred to as \u2018patata\u2019.<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a>
Illustration of the sweet potato plant in Carolus Clusius\u2019s Rariorum plantarum historia<\/em>, Antwerp, Officina Plantiniana, 1601<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

In England for much of the early 16th century, \u2018potato\u2019 had indicated simply the sweet potato. Confusion arose however upon the introduction to the country of the white-fleshed variety. Sir Walter Raleigh\u2019s exploration of the New World had resulted in the naming of Virginia \u2013 which in 1607 would become\u00a0the first colony of England<\/a>. Mistakenly believing that the crop\u00a0which was now appearing in England was native to the region, writers including John Gerard took to naming the common potato the \u2018Virginian potato\u2019 to distinguish it from its sweet \u2013 and in fact largely unrelated \u2013 counterpart. Others dubbed the common potato the \u2018bastard potato\u2019. Owing to the early date of Falstaff\u2019s reference, and his invocation of the potato as a sort of aphrodisiac, we may infer that he was invoking the sweet potato in The Merry Wives of Windsor<\/em>. But with the \u2018Virginian\u2019 appellation only haphazardly\u00a0used<\/a>\u00a0before falling entirely out of favour, from the end of the 1500s and throughout the following century, it is difficult to determine which version \u2013 sweet or common \u2013 is being referred to when the word \u2018potato\u2019 is used in English-language texts.<\/p>\n

Despite the rapidity of its emergence, competing with the carrot and parsnip in England, and the turnip in France, the common potato was slow to win public acclaim. While officials gradually began to promote its uptake among the peasantry, in France the potato was associated with leprosy<\/a>, and in Italy was utilised predominantly as animal feed. In the British Isles, however, the common potato took hold in Ireland \u2013 purportedly having been introduced there by Sir Walter Raleigh, who is rumoured to have planted a crop on his estate at Myrtle Grove, Youghal, County Cork. In the 1700s, Frederick William I and Frederick II of Prussia advanced the cause of the common potato, while in some German regions its planting was enforced by law. And the French too began to be won over, thanks to the considerable efforts of\u00a0Antoine-Augustin Parmentier<\/a>. Most importantly, it was seen that the potato was good for averting famine. In the 1750s, an English Board of Agriculture went so far as to declare, \u2018Potatoes and water alone, with common salt, can nourish men completely\u2019.<\/p>\n

Although\u00a0\u2013 despite the prolonged confusion \u2013 \u2018potato\u2019 had been entrenched in English and \u2018patata\u2019 consolidated in Spanish, the rest of continental Europe diverged when it came to deciding upon the name of the ordinary crop.\u00a0German-speaking Europe vacillated between three different designations. \u2018Kartoffel\u2019 arose apparently by virtue of a mistake, which has been attributed to Carolus Clusius<\/a>: stemming from an erroneous categorisation of potatoes as \u2018little truffles\u2019, \u2018tartuffolo\u2019 in Italian, whose etymological root is in the Latin \u2018tuber\u2019, meaning a swelling or lump. \u2018Kartoffel\u2019 would ultimately win out in the north, but it was challenged through the 1600s and on into the 1700s by \u2018erdapfel\u2019, a reemergence of the centuries-old concept of an \u2018earth apple\u2019, and by \u2018grundbirne\u2019, which means \u2018ground pear\u2019.<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a>
October<\/em>, by Jules Bastien-Lepage (1878). Oil on canvas. 181 cm x 196 cm. National Gallery of Victoria<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

Together, these four very different terms \u2013 \u2018potato\u2019\/\u2019patata\u2019, \u2018kartoffel\u2019, \u2018erdapfel\u2019, and \u2018grundbirne\u2019 \u2013 would haggle and disperse over Europe. In Sweden, for instance, \u2018potatis\u2019 is now used \u2013 but only after largely replacing the earlier \u2018jordp\u00e4ron\u2019<\/a>. In Icelandic, the word for potato is \u2018kartafla\u2019. While \u2018kartoffel\u2019 is\u00a0standard in northern Germany and \u2018grundbirne\u2019 long fell out of use, \u2018erdapfel\u2019 remains the word\u00a0for potato in Austria, and parts of southern Germany and Switzerland. The flowing of forms has become a torrent in Slovakia, where there are 31 distinct terms\u00a0for the potato<\/a>.<\/p>\n

In France, though \u2018cartoufle\u2019 was briefly used in the early years of the potato, it soon became known as \u2018pomme de terre\u2019. Likewise the Dutch held on to the idea of the earth apple, calling the potato \u2018aardappel\u2019. And something of this sensibility would show through when, in the works of Vincent van Gogh<\/a>, the potato found its highest artistic expression. Between the autumn of 1882 and the spring of 1885, in The Hague then in Nuenen, Van Gogh completed eighteen paintings<\/a> and more than twenty drawings<\/a> highlighting the potato. These culminated in The Potato Eaters<\/em>, which Van Gogh worked on in April 1885 and completed at the beginning of May. For years, Van Gogh considered The Potato Eaters<\/em> his best work<\/a>. In letters to his brother Theo at the time of the painting, he depicted the colour of his figures as \u2018something like the colour of a really dusty potato, unpeeled of course\u2019<\/a>, and wrote<\/a>:<\/p>\n

\u2018You see, I really have wanted to make it so that people get the idea that these folk, who are eating their potatoes by the light of their little lamp, have tilled the earth themselves with these hands they are putting in the dish, and so it speaks of <\/em>manual labour and \u2014 that they have thus honestly earned their food.\u2019<\/em><\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a>
The Potato Eaters<\/em>, by Vincent van Gogh (1885). Oil on canvas. 82 cm x 114 cm. Van Gogh Museum, Amsterdam<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

The arrival of the potato in Russia has been asserted as the result of the months Peter the Great spent in the Netherlands in 1697<\/a>. Enamoured with the Dutch \u2018aardappel\u2019, Peter is reported to have sent a sack of potatoes home to Russia to Count Boris Sheremetev<\/a>. Whatever, the potato remained rare in Russia until 1765, when the Governing Senate \u2013 responding to outbreaks of illness which owed to insufficient\u00a0grain \u2013 ordered the widespread cultivation of the crop. In 1770, the esteemed agriculturalist and memoirist Andrey Bolotov published a paper<\/a> \u2018\u041f\u0440\u0438\u043c\u0435\u0447\u0430\u043d\u0438\u044f \u043e \u043a\u0430\u0440\u0442\u043e\u0444\u0435\u043b\u0435, \u0438\u043b\u0438 \u0437\u0435\u043c\u043b\u044f\u043d\u043e\u0435 \u044f\u0431\u043b\u043e\u043a\u0430\u0445\u2019 (\u2018Primechaniya o kartofele, ili zemlyanoyeh yabluhkakh<\/em>\u2018), which translates as \u2018Remarks on the potato, or earth apples\u2019. Yet by the turn of the 19th century, though there had been significant uptake among the nobility, the potato was still being roundly ignored\u00a0by Russia\u2019s peasants.<\/p>\n

As Bolotov\u2019s paper indicates, in the early days of the potato in Russia, it went by two names: \u2018\u041a\u0430\u0440\u0442\u043e\u0444\u0435\u043b\u044c\u2019 (\u2018kartofel<\/em>\u2018), from the German \u2018kartoffel\u2019; and\u00a0\u2018\u0417\u0435\u043c\u043b\u044f\u043d\u043e\u0435 \u044f\u0431\u043b\u043e\u043a\u043e\u2019<\/a> \u00a0(\u2018zemlyanoyeh yabluhkuh<\/em>\u2018), which means \u2018earth apple\u2019, and drew upon the French \u2018pomme de terre\u2019. The Russian nobility\u00a0during the time of Catherine the Great, particularly in the capital Saint Petersburg, were \u2013 in the words of the historian Orlando Figes \u2013 \u2018totally immersed in French culture\u2019. Count Pyotr Sheremetev, Boris\u2019s son, rebuilt the family\u2019s Fountain House on the Fontanka river replete with a library of 20,000 books, most of which were in French. French tutors taught the children of the nobility, and French was the language of officialdom, high society, and letters. This relationship wavered somewhat towards the end of the 1700s, as Russians began to negotiate an identity equally as part of and\u00a0in contrast to Europe; and it faltered more severely in the aftermath of the French Revolution, the Napoleonic Wars, and the French invasion of Russia of 1812. Still, the strength of the connection with French culture meant that\u00a0\u2018\u0417\u0435\u043c\u043b\u044f\u043d\u043e\u0435 \u044f\u0431\u043b\u043e\u043a\u043e\u2019 continued to be\u00a0the favoured term for the potato into the beginning of the 1800s.<\/p>\n

\u2018\u041a\u0430\u0440\u0442\u043e\u0444\u0435\u043b\u044c\u2019 won out through the course of the 19th century, and is the word Russians use for the potato today. \u2018\u041a\u0430\u0440\u0442\u043e\u0448\u043a\u0430\u2019 (\u2018kartoshka<\/em>\u2018) is a diminutive\u00a0form. In other Slavic languages<\/a> the word for potato remains embedded in the concept of \u2018\u0417\u0435\u043c\u043b\u044f\u2019, the earth. The Polish word for potato is \u2018ziemniak\u2019, from \u2018ziemia\u2019, which means earth or ground; while of the 31 regional Slovak variations, \u2018zemiaky\u2019, from \u2018zem\u2019, is standard.<\/p>\n

The potato offers anecdotal engagement with the Golden Age of Russian literature. Alexander Pushkin grew up at home and at school immersed in French, which was for him a second native language<\/a>. Upon entering the newly opened\u00a0Lyc\u00e9e at Tsarskoe Selo in 1811, aged twelve, the headmaster\u2019s private note on the young pupil read: \u2018Empty-headed and thoughtless. Excellent at French and drawing, lazy and backward at arithmetic\u2019<\/a>. By the age of fourteen,\u00a0he had read a vast body of French literature, and could recite many passages by heart. Yet writing in the 1830s in the short fragment \u2018Egyptian Nights\u2019<\/a>, Pushkin was identifying himself when he described a poet who \u2018preferred baked potatoes to any concoctions of a French cuisine\u2019. Baked potatoes were Pushkin\u2019s favourite food<\/a>. He is reported to have particularly enjoyed the dish\u00a0served\u00a0with the potato skins left intact<\/a>. Elsewhere, the titular character of Gogol\u2019s story Taras Bulba<\/em> is a Ukrainian reference to the\u00a0potato. Gogol\u2019s fiction abounds in allusions to food; and in \u2018The Carriage\u2019 he depicts \u2018One extremely fat landowner with short arms, somewhat resembling two potatoes growing on him\u2019. For this characterisation, Gogol used \u2018\u043a\u0430\u0440\u0442\u043e\u0444\u0435\u043b\u044f\u2019<\/a>.<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a>
Still Life: Potatoes in a Yellow Dish<\/em>, by Vincent van Gogh (1888). Oil on canvas.\u00a0Kr\u00f6ller-M\u00fcller Museum, Otterlo<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

Potatoes\u00a0remained unpopular among the Russian peasantry \u2013 with their combination of disinterest and distrust compounded by the Old Believers, who compared the potato to the forbidden fruit of Genesis \u2013 until 1840. Following unrest in 1834, in 1840 the Russian government issued a decree ordering\u00a0peasants to grow potatoes on some of their most fertile land. While the similar order of 1765 had scarcely been upheld, this time the government sought to enforce their wish.\u00a0In the words of Alexander Herzen, from his autobiography My Past and Thoughts<\/em><\/a> \u2013 translated into English by Constance Garnett,\u00a0in an edition introduced by\u00a0Isaiah Berlin:<\/p>\n

\u2018Like the peasantry of all Europe at one time, the Russian peasants were not very keen on planting potatoes, as though an instinct told the people that this was a trashy kind of food which would give them neither health nor strength. However, on the estates of decent landowners and in many Crown\u00a0villages \u2018earth apples\u2019 had been planted long before the potato terror. But anything that is done of itself is distasteful to the Russian government. Everything must be done under threat of the stick and\u00a0the drill-sergeant, and by numbers.\u2019<\/em><\/p>\n

In the central and lower Volga regions, particularly round Kazan, and in Kirov and in the Urals, the peasants revolted against this decree<\/a>. Herzen depicts this revolt as a gradual process. A misunderstanding regarding the damage done to potatoes by frost appears to have persisted in the Russian Empire from the introduction of the crop in the 1700s. Herzen recounts the peasants protesting only when asked by the authorities to plant frozen potatoes: \u2018There cannot, indeed, be a more flagrant insult to labour than a command to do something obviously absurd\u2019. A compromise was agreed between the peasants and local officials, who extracted a small fee in return for allowing the peasants to plant whatever they pleased. But in the fourth year of this compromise, with the peasants resenting the fee and more pressure being exerted by the government, the situation descended into violent revolt.<\/p>\n

\"800px-Molokhovets1\"<\/a>
The 1917 edition of Elena Molokhovets\u2019 cookbook \u041f\u043e\u0434\u0430\u0440\u043e\u043a \u043c\u043e\u043b\u043e\u0434\u044b\u043c \u0445\u043e\u0437\u044f\u0439\u043a\u0430\u043c<\/em>, translated as A Gift to Young Housewives<\/em><\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

As Herzen remarks, \u2018It is enough to say that it came to using grape-shot and bullets\u2019. Up to half a million peasants engaged in the revolt, and by 1844 there had been numerous shootings, while thousands of peasants were tried, convicted, and exiled to Siberia. Despite the revolt, the government had succeeded in curbing resistance to the potato. However difficult it had been to achieve, by the late 1800s potatoes had\u00a0become a core component of the Russian table<\/a>.\u00a0Elena Molokhovets\u2019 famed cookbook\u00a0\u041f\u043e\u0434\u0430\u0440\u043e\u043a \u043c\u043e\u043b\u043e\u0434\u044b\u043c \u0445\u043e\u0437\u044f\u0439\u043a\u0430\u043c<\/span><\/i> (\u2018<\/span>Podaruhk molodym hozyahykam<\/span><\/i>\u2018), translated as A Gift to Young Housewives<\/em>, contained recipes for the potato from its first edition of 1861. Many more were added as Molokhovets<\/a> continued to revise the book up until 1917<\/a>; with the work \u2013 although criticised for disparaging the peasantry, and later banned in the Soviet Union<\/a> \u2013 passing through twenty-four editions by 1904. Meanwhile the potato came to be referred to as a \u2018second bread\u2019; and found much added value in the production\u00a0of Russian\u00a0vodka.<\/span><\/p>\n

Beyond Europe, the potato also appears in the formulation \u2018earth apple\u2019 in Haitian Creole, Persian, and Hebrew<\/a>. In Meir Shalev\u2019s The Blue Mountain<\/em> \u2013 a novel about Russian Jews settling in the Jezreel Valley in Palestine in the early years of the 20th century \u2013 Levin chastises a theatrical return-to-the-soil movement<\/a>:<\/p>\n

\u2018You people never had any appreciation of plain ordinary work. You were too busy acting in your great Theater of Redemption and Rebirth. Every plowing was a return to the earth, every chicken laid the first Jewish egg after 2,000 years of exile. Ordinary potatoes, the same <\/em>kartoffelakh you at in Russia, became taphuchei adamah, \u201cearth apples\u201d, to show how you were one with Nature.\u2019<\/em><\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a>
The \u2018Erdapfel\u2019 produced by Martin Behaim between 1491 and 1494: the oldest surviving globe of the world<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

\u2018Earth apple\u2019 also refers outside the realm of food. The \u2018Erdapfel\u2019 produced by Martin Behaim<\/a> between 1491 and 1494, now in the collection of the Germanisches Nationalmuseum<\/a> in Nuremberg,\u00a0is considered to be the oldest surviving terrestrial globe. With\u00a0Columbus\u2019s voyages just underway, the globe does not feature the Americas.\u00a0Earth Apples<\/em>, published posthumously in 1994,\u00a0is equally the title of the only collection of poetry by the American author and environmentalist Edward Abbey<\/a>.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

The etymology of the word \u2018apple\u2019 takes us back to the Early Middle Ages, when it appeared in various related forms across the Germanic languages: as \u2018apful\u2019\/\u2019aphul\u2019 or \u2018apfel\u2019\/\u2019aphel\u2019 in Old High German, \u2018appel\u2019 in Old Frisian, \u2018appul\u2019 in Old Saxon, \u2018epli\u2019 in Old Icelandic,\u00a0\u2018\u00e6pl\u00e6\u2019 or \u2018\u00e6p\u00e6l\u2019 in Old Danish, and so on. At the […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":14516,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"nf_dc_page":"","_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[3874,3876,3878,3879],"tags":[3781,272,3780,3782,2746,3483],"class_list":{"0":"post-4343","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-art","8":"category-food","9":"category-literature","10":"category-long-reads","11":"tag-alexander-herzen","12":"tag-anecdote","13":"tag-etymology","14":"tag-potatoes","15":"tag-russia","16":"tag-vincent-van-gogh"},"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"yoast_head":"\nA Cultural History of the Potato as Earth Apple<\/title>\n<meta name=\"description\" content=\"A cultural and etymological history of the potato as earth apple, viewing the crop's first depictions in European art, Shakespeare, Van Gogh, Herzen, etc.\" \/>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/culturedarm.com\/cultural-history-potato-earth-apple\/\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"A Cultural History of the Potato as Earth Apple\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:description\" content=\"A cultural and etymological history of the potato as earth apple, viewing the crop's first depictions in European art, Shakespeare, Van Gogh, Herzen, etc.\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:url\" content=\"https:\/\/culturedarm.com\/cultural-history-potato-earth-apple\/\" \/>\n<meta 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