THE POTATO AT HOME 315 



staying if she had ever tasted a potato boiled in 

 its jacket. Yes, she had, once only, and didn't 

 like it because it didn't taste like a potato such 

 a funny flavour ! 



That " funny " flavour, so unlike the taste of 

 the tuber boiled and water-logged in the homely 

 English way, is precisely the flavour which makes 

 it so nice to eat and so valuable as food ; also, if 

 I may slip in the personal pathology or idiosyn- 

 cratic abnormality, so perfect a cure for indigestion. 

 It is, in fact, the taste imparted by the salts which 

 mostly lie close beneath the skin, and are con- 

 sequently thrown away when the potato is peeled 

 before boiling. You cannot avoid this waste by 

 scraping your potato, since scraping removes the 

 waterproof skin, and, the skin gone, the boiling 

 water saturates the potato and carries the salts 

 away. 



This is a serious matter in these days, when 

 as some of the newspapers say we are trying to 

 economise in the matter of food, and when the 

 potato is beginning to be talked about. I suppose 

 that there are about thirty or forty millions of us 

 who consume about half a pound of potatoes every 

 day ; and it is not only the case that hundreds of 

 tons of excellent food are thrown away every day in 

 the peeling process, but that the most valuable 

 elements in the potato are wasted. Perhaps the 

 war will teach us to value the potato properly, as, 

 I believe, it is and always has been valued in most 

 countries outside these islands. 



