If there is a word that describes a person obsessed with a particular vegetable, then it would certainly apply to Larry Zuckerman. Zuckerman is one of an apparently growing band of people who are fascinated by potatoes. His interest, however, is not culinary but remains in the realms of history and the social significance of the world's most popular vegetable.
Taking the potato from the Andes in the 16th century, to fish and chips ("the story of how a vegetable changed history") he gives a scholarly account of the extraordinary and gradual global acceptance of a vegetable that was regarded as fit only as food for pigs when it first arrived in Europe.
His argument is that potatoes revolutionised Western civilisation. With a lively wit he chronicles the story of a vegetable that incurred the hatred of the European peasantry who had to be bribed and threatened to include potatoes in their diet. As late as 1818, William Cobbett was writing that potatoes were the root of slovenliness, filth, misery and slavery" and Raleigh, who was (probably inaccurately) credited with bringing the potato to England was "one of the greatest villains on Earth" and he, Cobbett, would rather be hanged than see anyone live on the "lazy root".
In 1848 the stolid moderate Trevelyan was forming a connection between the eating of potatoes and moral decay that "incited the lower orders to revolt". The chapters on the role of the potato in the Irish Famine (which coincided with the lesser known French famine) are fascinating, but anyone rushing to harsh judgment of Victorian attitudes is reminded by Zuckerman of the many parallels in our social welfare systems and our own sometime-cynicism about the so-called underclass.
Even the culinary delights of the potato were not appreciated until relatively recently. Queen Victoria's chef Charles Elme Francatelli, suggested that they either had to be sculpted and passed off as pears or olives or disguised by inclusion with other foods.
No one who has studied the history of the potato could have done so without reference to the classic History and Social Influence of the Potato by the late Redcliffe Salaman, and Larry Zuckerman quotes his aside that "people question your sanity if you devote your life to so banal a subject". Zuckerman's agenda is to prove that the role of the potato in history was anything but banal and he succeeds in this by drawing on diaries, government accounts, personal chronicles and many other sources. The narrative is not linear, but takes you on an analytic journey round the world that absorbs and delights.
Two small quibbles with what is otherwise a fine read: the only illustrations are a few maps that do not seem greatly significant and I should not advise a preliminary reading of the introduction. The opening sentences are so wordy they could almost have been written by someone other than Zuckerman. Elsewhere his light touch is evident: one is sure that he will not suffer the same fate as the potato crusader Monsieur Parmentier, whose approach, Zuckerman speculates, may have caused French courtiers to find "someplace else to go".
Lucy Madden is the author of The Potato Year published by Milu Press (£9.95) and also the co-proprietor and chef at the highly recommended Hilton Park in Clones, Co Monaghan which is open until the end of September (tel: 047-56007).
The Potato by Larry Zuckerman is published by Macmillan (£10 in UK)