There was an exception to their distaste for things found in earth, though: truffles. They treated the potato as a botanical curiosity and had it grown as a decorative plant, but were completely uninterested in the dirty, unshapely tubers. In those times rich people (and they were the only ones who could afford potatoes) found the idea of eating something that grows or lives in dirt repulsive. The truth is, even if he had received a bag of potatoes from the emperor as a present, it's still unlikely that he ever developed a taste for them. And the reason they were doing this was that they were afraid that someone might inadvertently commit sacrilege by mistakenly adding potato starch instead of wheat flour to the dough for altar bread. Some priests, he wrote, spread around the opinion that these tubers were disgusting in taste and unhealthy.
Potatoes were not an immediate hit, according to him. Jędrzej Kitowicz, an 18th-century priest known for his account of everyday life in Poland during the reign of Augustus III, also pointed to Saxony as the place where the "earth apples" were imported from.
Zalewski, already quoted above, adds that Łuba imported whole wagons of seed potatoes from Saxony, as the king "demanded a platter of potatoes (fried whole) with his every dinner", citing (wait for it) "a well-informed historian". At least this is what Orgelbrand's 1868 encyclopedia says. The latter is known for being the first in Poland (during the reign of the next king, Augustus II) to grow potatoes on a larger scale in his garden at Nowolipki near Warsaw and sell them as a luxury item to the royal and magnate kitchens. The man who actually planted them was the Wilanów gardener Paweł Wienczarek, who later transferred his potato-planting knowledge to his son-in-law, Jan Łuba. Leopold I Habsburg (1640–1705), emperor of the Holy Roman Empire Piotr Zalewski: Ziemniak jako roślina uprawna – fragmenty historii, in: Inżynieria Rolnicza, 5 (114), 2009, p. A sceptic, who remembers retreat from Párkány from his history classes, might think that King John had more pressing problems on his head following his famous victory, but the king's letter, which has assertedly been preserved, testifies to the contrary. Potatoes The fact that John III brought the potato to Wilanów from the Viennese expedition is considered incontestable in the subject-matter literature. And should all these legends be true, then whether you're having borscht with potatoes in Poland or Ukraine, washing down you breakfast croissant with coffee in Vienna or spreading your bagel with cream cheese in New York, you should be grateful to King John III Sobieski for his spectacular victory over the Ottoman Turks. Well, if we judge the importance of a historical event by the number of culinary myths associated with it, then the Battle of Vienna was certainly a momentous one indeed. So let's see how the Victory of Vienna helped enrich our menus. Okay, but this blog is not about geopolitical or military myths it's about culinary myths. Or so, at least, I've been taught at school. And also the moment which saw (or heard) the famed Polish Winged Hussars' swansong. John III Sobieski (1629–1696), king of Polandġ2 September this year was the 335th anniversary of the Relief of Vienna – the time when once again a wave of savages from the east crashed against the Polish breakwater protecting European civilization from its doom.
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