The French Revolution did not just overthrow a hated regime: it laid waste to an entire social order, one that had been constructed over the course of a thousand years, and its destruction left an immense vacuum. Fueled by a utopian mélange of egalitarianism, nationalism, and scientific innovation, the new French ruling class embarked on a radical remaking of society. We have already seen some of their dramatic measures: the declaration of legal equality for all men, the subordination of the Church, the establishment of a republic. These far-reaching reforms were buttressed by social tinkering in many aspects of daily life, all of which were intended to reinforce the dramatic revolutionary project now under way.
For example, the radicals’ fondness for decimalization led not only to the introduction of the first metric system of measurement but to a new calendar, which was followed for about twelve years. The new year now began on the fall equinox, and the twelve months were given new names like Vendémiaire (from vendange, or grape harvest) and Fructidor (from the Latin fructus, or fruit). Each month consisted of three ten-day weeks, with each day reconfigured into ten hours. Previously, each day of the year had commemorated a different Catholic saint, but this was adapted into a more appropriate form of worship: each day now celebrated a different element of French agriculture, such as its fruits and vegetables, its crops and livestock, even its soils and farm implements.
In this new calendar, 11 Vendémiaire (previously known as October 2) celebrated the humble pomme de terre, or potato. Certainly to the French today, it is a crop worthy of worship: rich in vitamins and antioxidants, easy to grow, and almost infinitely malleable, whether fried, boiled, mashed, sautéed, or baked (and it even produces pretty flowers). The potato is the most widely eaten vegetable in France, fashioned into an endless variety of gratins, soups, purees, casseroles, and pancakes. And yet shockingly, this love for potatoes is surprisingly recent, only emerging in this era of revolutionary cataclysm—and mostly as a result of the tireless propaganda efforts of one man, Antoine-Augustin Parmentier.
The ancestral home of the potato is the Andes Mountains, in modern-day Peru and Bolivia. Wild varieties were domesticated more than seven thousand years ago, and were eventually discovered by Spanish conquistadores during their destruction of the Inca civilization in the sixteenth century. The Spanish introduced the potato to Europe, but unlike some of the more successful transplants we have already encountered, the potato met with considerable resistance. It seemed dangerous to eat: the greens were poisonous, it belonged to the same toxic family of plants as deadly nightshade, and people also came to believe potatoes caused leprosy. Potatoes were not mentioned in the Bible, which gave them a suspect air. They also had a bland taste. So they were mostly used as animal feed, and this cemented their status as food not fit for humans.
But by the eighteenth century, potato consumption increased in other parts of Europe, including Italy, Britain, and the Low Countries. Frederick the Great of Prussia issued fifteen royal decrees promoting potato cultivation as a means of combating famine, and he was largely responsible for their growing popularity among Germans. For this he is sometimes called der Kartoffelkönig, the Potato King, and to this day people leave potatoes on his grave in Potsdam.
It is thanks to the Prussians that our hero, Monsieur Parmentier, became fascinated with the humble spud. Parmentier served in the French army as a pharmacist during the Seven Years’ War (1756–63) and was captured by the Prussians. During his lengthy captivity, he ate potatoes for the first time. To his surprise, his new diet did not give him leprosy, and it actually kept him in decent shape. He returned home with a mission: to convince the French to eat potatoes. It proved to be a long and arduous campaign.
Parmentier had some early success, in 1772, when the academy of Besançon awarded him first prize in a competition on “the study of food substances that could mitigate the calamities of famine.” The very existence of such a competition indicates the severity of food scarcity in this era. For Parmentier, the pursuit of the potato was not just a scientific endeavor but a moral quest to solve the enduring problem of hunger and famine. In his Besançon essay, he wrote:
Without taking away the gratitude that we owe to the Aristotles, the Descartes and the Newtons, whose genius shed light on the universe, would not it have been desirable that one of them, instead of gliding over the most elevated heights, dropped down to consider the primary needs of his fellow men? What does it matter to the ordinary man the course by which the stars follow their path, if during this very time they die of hunger?1
Yet potatoes were still slow to catch on. Many people focused on trying to use them to make bread, a logical goal at a time when the population was overly dependent on this one food item. But it was actually very difficult to make bread solely with potato flour, which lacks gluten, and the final product did not taste very good. Only gradually did people realize it was best to mix potato flour with traditional grains. Voltaire became a cheerful potato supporter, extolling the virtues of half-potato/half-wheat bread.
Parmentier remained undeterred and decided the best way to get the general population to embrace potatoes was to promote them to the aristocratic and wealthy classes first. Throughout history, foods that were seen as rare, expensive, or popular among the elites eventually became fashionable among the masses as well, so this was a fairly shrewd tactic by our potato propagandist. On the advice of Benjamin Franklin, an early convert, he organized an elegant potato dinner for prominent Parisians, in which every course featured a different potato dish.
But Parmentier’s greatest marketing coup was to win the support of the royal family. In 1785, he approached King Louis XVI and Marie Antoinette at a royal banquet. He carried with him a bunch of potato flowers and somehow charmed the king to put one in his buttonhole, while the queen placed some in her wig. Thus the flower became a new fashion accessory, and the king became aware of the nourishing potential of the potato. He gave Parmentier a piece of land near Paris to cultivate potatoes, and according to legend said to him: “France will one day thank you, for having found the bread of the poor.” (Unfortunately for the king, this day did not come soon enough to save his own head.) Parmentier cleverly exploited this royal gift by placing guards around his potato field to fend off intruders, leading locals to imagine that the crop planted there must be extremely valuable, and thus raising the potato’s reputation higher.
Still, by the time of the revolution, the potato had made only slight inroads into popular tastes. Parmentier was not in favor with the new regime, and he left Paris for a time. But the hour of the potato had come, for the revolutionary leadership well understood that the food scarcity that had helped bring them to power could just as easily cast them out again. A malnourished population would be more inclined to criticize and resist their radical reforms and to support the royalists and counterrevolutionaries threatening the fragile republic.
In December 1793, the revolutionary government distributed ten thousand copies of Parmentier’s memoir on the cultivation and consumption of potatoes. As it turned out, the potato was an ideal revolutionary food: it was a novel staple crop at a time of unprecedented innovation and transformation; it was cheap to produce and thus democratic, suiting rich and poor alike; and because it was heavier and bulkier than cereals, it was more difficult for treasonous speculators to hoard them and drive up prices.2 Its humble character was a welcome antidote to the immoral luxuries of ancien régime cuisine.
The potato cause was also helped along by the publication of a recipe book called La Cuisinière républicaine in 1794. It was the first French cookbook attributed to a woman, Madame Mérigot, and it consisted solely of potato recipes. These were fairly simple: for example, pommes des terres au champignons, a mix of potatoes, mushrooms, shallots, and chives in a vinegary bouillon. She also had a very simple recipe for a potato salad: “After the potatoes are cooked, slice them and season with oil, vinegar, herbs, salt, and pepper. Instead of oil you can use butter or cream: this salad can be eaten hot or cold.”3 Simple, cheap, and nourishing: a food fit for the new men and women of the revolution.
As people learned more delicious ways of consuming potatoes, and scarcity continued to encourage substitute food sources, they became ever more popular, especially in Paris. The magnificent Tuileries and Luxembourg Gardens were planted with potatoes, and the balconies of the capital were dotted with potato plants. A few years later, as revolutionary ardor receded, the government’s enthusiasm for promoting the potato waned. But its practical benefits had become evident, and cultivation gradually increased throughout the country. By 1803, France was already producing 1.5 million tons of potatoes per year; by midcentury, that figure rose to more than 10 million tons. Parmentier’s mission was complete: the potato finally found a lasting place in French cuisine.
Parmentier was among the first recipients of Napoleon’s new Legion of Honour, and he was appointed director of the national health service. When he died in 1813, he was buried in the famous Père Lachaise Cemetery in Paris, his grave surrounded by potato flowers. In 1904, the Parmentier station was opened on the Paris Métro Line 3, and it remains a wonderfully effusive shrine to the great man: a detailed history of the potato runs alongside the platform wall, and a large statue of the noble Parmentier handing a potato to a kneeling peasant captures his popular legacy. His name also lives on in a number of potato recipes, most notably hachis Parmentier, a casserole of mashed potatoes and minced beef.
Today, France still produces more than 5 million tons of potatoes every year, and the average French person consumes more than 110 pounds of fresh or processed potatoes annually.4 The country that once considered potatoes only fit for pig feed now showcases a range of delicious varieties, such as the flavorful Belle de Fontenay new potato, popular since the late nineteenth century; the Ratte fingerling potato, with a slight chestnut flavor; and the deep purple Bleue d’Auvergne, which pairs well with the cheese of the same name.
The Parmentier Métro station in Paris features a statue of a noble Parmentier giving a potato to a hungry peasant. © Lillian Hueber, 2016.
Of course, one of the most popular uses of the potato in the world today is the french fry, but it is not entirely clear whether the French can claim credit for this invention. The Belgians take particular pride in their frites and claim to have been eating them since the seventeenth century, when villagers in the harsh winter months would fry potatoes instead of fish when the rivers froze over. According to this narrative, American servicemen are to blame for the dish becoming known as French instead of Belgian: during World War I, American GIs encountered frites in southern Belgium, where French is spoken, and so brought them back to the United States as “french fries.”
According to an alternative narrative, the French began eating frites in the 1780s, and it appears that an early French version of the fry—pommes de terre frites à cru en petites tranches (small slices of raw potato, deep-fried)—was brought back to the United States by none other than Thomas Jefferson, who served as American ambassador to France. They became known as “French-fried potatoes,” but they did not really become popular in the United States until the twentieth century, when the name became shortened to “french fries.” Regardless of which narrative is more accurate, McDonald’s and other American fast-food empires helped transform the fry into a global favorite later in the twentieth century.
Today, the French eat frites with many dishes—the classic steak-frites springs to mind—but they are not quite as obsessed with them as the Belgians, who have been trying to acquire UNESCO cultural heritage status for their frites. When U.S. congressmen spearheaded a move to rename french fries “freedom fries,” after France refused to support the 2003 invasion of Iraq, the French basically shrugged and pointed out that fries were Belgian anyway. (Their sangfroid was probably a bit more tested by reports of bottles of Dom Pérignon being poured down gutters, which just seems sacrilegious.)
But the French remain greatly enamored of potatoes generally. In fact, if a French person is feeling in great form, he or she might say “J’ai la patate!” (“I’ve got the potato!”). It’s not clear where this expression comes from, but it’s another indication of how positively French people now feel about a food they once demonized.