If I were marooned on a desert island with only one food, it
would be POTATOES (white, not sweet)! Almost everyone who knows me knows that I
love POTATOES as much as I love Shakespeare—and in my world, the two are
comparable—supreme food for the soul and supreme food for the body. Recently, I
decided to investigate what my literary love had to say about my culinary love,
although I expected that Shakespeare had very little to say about potatoes.
Surprisingly, I found two references to potatoes in my
Shakespeare lexicon. The first comes from “Troilus and Cressida.” In Act 5,
Scene 2, Troilus, Ulysses, and Thersites spy on Cressida as she betrays Troilus
by flirting with Diomedes, touching his face. Thersites, tormenting Troilus, comments,
“How the devil luxury (lust), with his fat rump and potato finger, tickles
these together!” A footnote informs that potatoes were regarded as a “sex
stimulant,” thus Cressida’s “potato finger” has a seductive meaning.
In the second reference, Falstaff in “The Merry Wives of
Windsor” is courting two married women in an attempt to scam money from them.
In Act 5, Scene 5, they decide to teach him a lesson and arrange a meeting with
him in a forest. One calls out to him and he replies, “Let the sky rain
potatoes, let it thunder to the tune of ‘Greensleeves,’ hail kissing comfits
(sweetmeats), and now eryngoes (an alleged aphrodisiac). Let there come a
tempest of provocation, I will shelter me here.” He is saying that a rain storm
of potatoes is a problem that would cause him to hunker down with this lady.
Based on the fact that potatoes have an aphrodisiac quality, Falstaff chooses a
potato storm on purpose.
In spite of my long-lived love of potatoes, I had no clue
that they supposedly can serve as an aphrodisiac. I Googled “potatoes
aphrodisiac” and found some interesting results. The first link came from
WebMD, “Aphrodisiacs
Through the Ages.”
An article on AlterNet, “Sex
and Food: the World’s Strangest Aphrodisiacs Through Time,” discusses how at one time, potatoes were
considered an aphrodisiac, citing Falstaff in “The Merry Wives of Windsor.” The
article goes on to debunk the stimulating effect of potatoes. The piece notes
the fact that while absence of something makes the heart grow fonder, the ready
access of something does not. Once potatoes became commonly accessible, they
supposedly lost their sex appeal.
Yet, an article from the PR Newswire reports on a baby boom beginning
in 1997 on the island of Jersey in the United Kingdom associated with the Jersey
Royal Potato season. The article quotes aphrodisiac expert James Sotte:
“Throughout
history potatoes have been considered an aphrodisiac. Amazonian women ate them
to stimulate their sex drive and in late 16th century Europe sweet potato tarts
were recommended to increase sexual desire. The reason is that potatoes have
the same affect on the body as chocolate; they increase serotonin levels.
Insulin is produced when digesting potatoes, affecting the movement of amino
acid from the blood to the brain, which stimulates serotonin production.
Serotonin is the chemical that makes you feel happy and is similar to the
feeling of being in love.”
Based
on my newfound knowledge of potatoes as an aphrodisiac, perhaps I may want to
rethink my choice of food if I am stranded on that deserted island alone!
NOTE: For my purposes in this blog, I decided not to define
the word “potato,” as a definition would add nothing to my point. However, out
of curiosity, I looked up “potato” in the on-line “American Heritage
Dictionary.” The entry refers the reader to a note regarding the word “tater,” which
intrigued me as a native speaker of the American Southern dialect. I included
the link for those who are interested.
