Name a vegetable that kids will eat more often as a snack than at the dinner table... The answer, the potato which when turned into chips or fries are readily devoured by kids of all ages. And even though mashed and baked potatoes are popular, more potatoes are eaten in this country every year in the form of chips or fries. So where did this delicious root come from? You might think Europe or more specifically Ireland, but you would be about a half a world away.

The potato was first domesticated in the region of modern-day southern Peru and northwestern Bolivia between 8000 and 5000 BC. Cultivation of potatoes in South America may go back 10,000 years, but since tubers do not preserve well in the archaeological record, a firm timeline is difficult to pin down. The earliest archaeologically verified potato tuber remains have been found at the coastal site of Ancón in central Peru, dating to 2500 BC.

Aside from actual remains, the potato is also found in the Peruvian archaeological record as a design influence of ceramic pottery, often in the shape of vessels. The potato arrived in Europe sometime before the end of the 16th century by two different ports of entry, brought back by European explorers. The first in Spain around 1570, and the second in the British Isles between 1588 and 1593. Sailors returning from the Andes to Spain with silver presumably brought maize and potatoes for their own food on the trip.

Historians speculate that leftover tubers and maize were carried ashore and planted. Basque fishermen from Spain used potatoes as ships' stores for their voyages across the Atlantic in the 16th century, and introduced the tuber to western Ireland, where they landed to dry their cod.

Back in north America, early colonists in Virginia and the Carolinas may have grown potatoes from seeds or tubers from Spanish ships, but the earliest certain potato crop in North America was in Londonderry, New Hampshire in 1719. The plants were from Ireland, so the crop became known as the “Irish potato”.

The origin of the “French Fry” is not so certain, but one enduring story tells that French fries were invented by street vendors on the Pont Neuf bridge in Paris in 1789, just before the outbreak of the French Revolution. Belgium also lays claim to be the origin of fries as Belgian journalist Jo Gérard claimed that a 1781 family manuscript recounts that potatoes were deep-fried prior to 1680 in the Meuse valley, in what was then the Spanish Netherlands now present-day Belgium. Whichever the case, the term French Fry has stuck for more than two centuries.

The origin of the potato chip is a little more certain as legend would have it. On 24 August 1853, at Moon's Lake House in Saratoga Springs, New York, a customer kept sending his French-fried potatoes back, complaining that they were too thick, too soggy, and not salted well enough.

Frustrated, chef George Crum personally sliced several potatoes extremely thin, fried the potato slices to a crisp, and seasoned them with extra salt. To Crum's surprise, the customer loved them. They soon came to be called “Saratoga Chips,” a name that persisted into at least the mid-twentieth century.

Crum's fussy customer was none other than Cornelius Vanderbilt. The Saratoga Potato Chip company is still in business today and available at most grocery stores.