The Potato in Ireland

Abstract

According to Arthur Young, writing in the 1770s, 'the food of the common Irish [is] potatoes and milk'.2 Many of the un common Irish of Ulster and parts of Leinster ate as much oaten bread or porridge as potatoes; they were familiar with the taste as well as the look of butter and eggs; and in good times they expected a daily meal with fish or bacon, even a weekly meal with meat. But for the greater part of the country, for a century before the Famine, Young's generalization will serve: the great mass of the population had, in effect, a single solid foodstuff: stirabout, or an oatmeal loaf, was an occasional treat: weeks or months separated the red-letter occasions when meat was eaten : day after day, three times a day, people ate salted, boiled potatoes, probably washing them down with milk, flavouring them, if they were fortunate, with an onion or a bit of lard, with boiled seaweed or a scrap of salted fish.