A recent YouGov survey certifies it: traditional fish and chips are still the second most popular dish in the United Kingdom… surpassed only by French fries alone. If cod has existed in the British Isles since the dawn of time, the love story with the potato has a beginning date: some sources date the arrival of the precious tuber in England to 3 December 1586. Sir Thomas Harriot, astronomer and mathematician, brought it from the Americas.

It was a fundamental moment in the food history of the country (as in the rest of Europe, especially in the North): thanks to its nutritional value, much greater than that of cereals, the potato doubled the availability of food. The era of great famines was over. It is no coincidence that in the mid-nineteenth century, it was a potato parasite that caused the “Great Famine” which killed a million Irish people and forced another million to migrate overseas.