Potatoes originated in South America where the inhabitants of the area we now call Peru and Chile cultivated the root vegetable or ‘papas’ for food more than 2000 years ago. It is reported that they also placed raw potato slices on broken bones, carried them to prevent rheumatism, and ate them with other foods to prevent indigestion.

The most popular legend on how potatoes made their way across the Atlantic involves the Spanish conquistadors and such famous adventurers as Sir Walter Raleigh and Sir Francis Drake, who introduced the potato into Europe on their return from their sea voyages around 1567. Over the following years potatoes spread quickly across the globe and today they are the fourth largest food crop in the world

The Potato Chip

Potato crisps / crisps, invented over 160 years ago, have long been one the world’s favourite type of savoury snack. The recipe for the classic potato chip / crisp has changed little over the decades and, although today the process is automated and on a much larger scale, a potato chip / crisp is still basically a fresh potato, delicately sliced, lightly fried in vegetable oils and then sprinkled with flavouring.

It is widely agreed that potato chips / crisps were first made in 1853 by a Native American chef, George Crum, at the fashionable Moon's Lake House hotel in Saratoga Springs, New York. The railway magnate Mr. Cornelius Vanderbilt who was an extremely discriminating customer complained that his chips were not sliced thinly enough and repeatedly sent them back to the kitchen. Upset that someone would criticize his cooking, Crum sliced a new batch of potatoes paper-thin, fried them in boiling oil to a crisp, and then salted them.

Crum’s joke backfired however and as a result the “Saratoga slices” or potato chips / crisps were a resounding success. It was not long before Saratoga Chips could be found in restaurants up and down the East Coast. Soon they became known as potato chips (crisps in the UK).

Shaped, pellet snacks are made from dehydrated potato, corn and wheat flour or mixtures of these and other ingredients such as pulses (lentils, beans, etc.). Some favourite snacks of this type you may be familiar with are prawn crackers, and different shaped snacks such as hoops, sticks, noughts and crosses, monster shapes, and even chicken drum sticks and heart shaped snacks. These snacks are produced as stable semi-manufactured pellets which later can then be lightly fried in vegetable oil or hot air to expand them, before flavouring and packing.