Crisps, chips and starch:
The demise of the traditional table potato
Unless it comes in the form of spicy potato crisps or thin, bite-sized chips, then the potato is considered rather unsophisticated, dull and homespun, quite simply old-fashioned.
Potato consumption has fallen more than any other agricultural product. In 1900 each German consumed on average 285 kilograms of potatoes per year (a potato mountain weighing almost one kilogram per person per day), today it amounts to less than 70 kilograms per year and around 50 percent of that includes industrially processed products such as crisps, chips, powdered mashed potato or frozen gratin.
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Nowadays the potato is regarded as an "inferior product"; it is not particularly highly valued and it evokes memories of hardship. It even seems that potato consumption actually falls as income rises. At any rate, it has had its day as a staple food.
By contrast, the industrial processing of potatoes has increased steadily, even enjoying a boom in the eighties and nineties. Of the in 2007/8 available 12.6 million tons potatoes half was processed industrially. The term "industrial potato" here includes both so-called processing potatoes i.e. potatoes for crisps, chips, potato flour, potato cakes etc. and potatoes for starch production, schnapps distilleries and fodder production, although the latter two are becoming increasingly less important. Starch production plays a considerable part in the boom
of the potato industry. From potato schnapps to dried potato puréePotato schnapps: The history of potato processing begins with potato schnapps, since even from the second half of the 18th century onward it became customary to convert the surplus potato harvest to brandy. However, it was only from the end of the 19th century to around the beginning of the Second World War that distilling potatoes to make schnapps really came into its own. In 1919 almost 80 percent of alcohol was produced from potatoes. Today, however, distilling has practically no relevance. Chips: It is likely that chips were invented at around the same time as potato schnapps. Tradition has it that they originated in Belgium. The Belgians loved frying fish in liberal quantities of fat and when fish was in short supply one year, they promptly fried the side dish of potatoes instead. And so the potato chip was born. Of course it was not until much later, only after the Second World War, that chips were mass-produced as a ready-made product. |
Crisps: Crisps, on the other hand, are an American invention. And there is a story behind this too: A certain George Crum, a chef in a New York State hotel, was serving fried potatoes to a guest in 1853. The guest, who was particularly difficult, complained that the slices of potato were too thick and sent the dish back several times, until the chef decided to annoy the guest by cutting the slices so thinly that they fried to a golden crisp and could no longer be speared with a fork. The guest was delighted and potato crisps were discovered. However, it was a long time before they caught on in continental Europe. The first customers to demand potato crisps in Germany were the American soldiers stationed there in the early fifties.
Starch: As with all potato products, starch was initially produced in the home by very simple means. The large-scale extraction of starch from potatoes did not begin until the onset of industrialisation. Whereas wheat had been the principal source of starch prior to then, it was now the turn of the potato. In 1890 there were around eight hundred factories in Germany producing starch from potatoes. Starch saccharification even became a serious contender to beet sugar at the time.
Dried products: In 1894 the "Verein der Stärkeinteressenten in Deutschland" (German Association of Parties Interested in Starch) together with the "Verein der Spiritus-Fabrikanten in Deutschland" (German Association of Spirits Producers) finally began to think about how potatoes could be preserved. Competitions were organised to develop and put into practice new methods of drying potatoes. However, this met with only moderate success. Nobody showed much enthusiasm for dried potatoes and they were mainly used in animal feed until the fifties. Sales of dried potato products only increased during wartime and from 1933 to 1936 there was a mini boom when the government of the German Reich decreed that bakeries were to use 50 percent potato flour as a raw material. Even after the war, when the product range had increased considerably, dried potato products were unable to shake off their image as a poor man’s food.
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