Welcome to
The
Potato Museum On-Line
Here you will find features exhibits from our collections,
a blog for spud news/reviews, products, recipes, links and a shop
The
Potato Museum, started (1975) in Brussels, Belgium, is the world's
first museum about the potato and features the planet's largest collection
about this valuable vegetable.
The
Potato Museum is not a product of the potato industry. We are a non-profit
educational organization dedicated to exploring the potato's fascinating
past, controversial present and promising future.
While
we occasionally enjoy eating Belgian fries, as well as chips (crisps
in UK), we mostly consume the noble tuber in many of its more nutritious
and delicious preparations.
We
welcome your comments, suggestions, financial support and ideas for
a permanent home.
"The Potato Museum...that idiosyncratic and
deadly serious institution."
---NY Times
"The Potato Museum is of the new modern type,
which cuts across academic frontiers; it's an enthusiast's museum
and our hard, cold, cynical world desperately needs enthusiasm."
---Kenneth Hudson, author of Museums of Influence
"....a museum that gives sustenance the kind
of attention museums give to wars, airplanes, human tragedy and the
like."
---Christian Science Monitor
"The most important issue confronting the
human race is how we are going to preserve the quality of the environment
and still feed the rapidly growing population into the next millennum.
The Potato Museum provides a vehicle to get the message across."
---Dr. John Niederhauser
1990 World Food Prize Laureate
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The
Delicious Potato
Potato Cookery: Specialties
Pommes de Terre Souffles
Antoine's Restaurant, New Orleans, USA
( We're optimists, using the present tense here, though
Antoine's is not currently serving anything, alas.)
Puff potato pockets are served in potato baskets as
an appetizer
at New Orleans' venerable Antoine's Restaurant.
The potatoes (left) are served in woven and fried potato
peel
baskets with a hunk of bread as a base.
The history of puffed potatoes or pommes souffles has to do
with a King of France being late to lunch on a journey once and
a harried cook having to improvise something special when the
rest of the meal was ruined.
"Aged" potatoes are cut in rectangles using
a mandolin cutting blade,
rinsed in cold water, deep fried and switched to hotter oil
at first sign of puffing.
Here's a look at Antoine's
Restaurant's website.
Potato items on the menu include:
Vichyssoise $6.25/$7.25
The classical cold potato soup (flavored with
chicken broth and finished with heavy cream)
Pommes de terre au gratin $6.25
Potatoes in a rich cream sauce baked in a
casserole with a light cheese gratinee
Pommes de terre brabant $6.00
Little diced potatoes fried and served with melted butter
Pommes de terre soufflees $6.25
The classical Antoine’s dish fried potato puffs
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EXHIBITS:
Amazing
Potato
Our
Potato Gallery
Potato Hall of Fame
The Literary Potato
Save Our Spuds
POTATO TALK
Our Blog
Total
Tater Experience
Listen
to spud songs while visiting The Potato Museum online.
Here's how:
File>New>Window>
>Potato Radio>select
song>wait for music to start>minimize window>restore www.potatomusum.com
To
listen to more songs, restore Potato Radio window and repeat process.
After
your Potato Museum visit, check out Potato
Engine and other favorite potato links.
Potato
Radio & Potato Engine are creations of
JEFFREY ALLEN PRICE
Why
the potato?
In the space of just
400 years, the potato has become a staple crop of many people around
the world whose antecedents had subsisted perfectly well upon grain
crops for anything up to 4000 years. The reason for this somewhat surprising
development is that the potato is the best all-around bundle of nutrition
known to mankind. Its ration of carbohydrate to protein is such that
anyone eating enough potatoes to satisfy their energy requirements will
automatically obtain most of the protein they require. Furthermore,
the "biological value" of potato protein (an index of the
nitrogen absorbed from a food and retained by the body for growth and
maintenance) is 73, second only to eggs at 96; just ahead of soybeans
at 72, but far superior to corn (maize) at 54 and wheat at 53. Potatoes
also contain significant amounts of essential vitamins (the British,
in fact, used to derive 30% of their vitamin C intake from potatoes.)
Exceptional productivity is another virtue of the potato. A field of
potatoes produces more energy per hectare per day than a field of any
other crop. Potatoes grow well from sea level to 14,000 feet on a wider
variety of soils, under a wider range of climatic conditions, than any
other staple food. The potato matures faster in 90 to 120 days, and
will provide small but edible tubers in just 60 days. All in all, the
potato is about the world's most efficient means of converting plant,
land, water and labour into a palatable and nutritious food.
John Reader, Man
on Earth, 1998
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