It is interesting

Who came up with the name of the potato?

Unlike cultivated wild potatoes, they were small and bitter. To discourage bitterness, the Indians came up with a very simple way. They noticed that the frozen tubers ceased to be bitter and became slightly sweet in taste. Therefore, the harvested crop was kept in the open air. The tubers were wet with rain, the sun was drying, they froze at night. After a while, the potatoes shriveled and softened. Then women and children crumpled him with their bare feet. It turned out to be a monotonous gray mass, which was dried in the sun and could be stored for a long time. She was called "chunyo".

Potatoes in the Indian way were called "pope" and it was under this name that he was first mentioned in the book "Chronicle of Peru", published in the Spanish city of Seville in the middle of the 16th century. Its author wrote: “Papas is a special kind of peanuts. When cooked, they become soft like a baked chestnut ... The nuts are skinned no thicker than the skin of a truffle. "

So, with the light hand of the author of the book, potatoes in Europe began to be called "Peruvian peanuts." To the Italians, its tubers resembled a truffle mushroom, the fruit body of which develops in the ground. They also came up with the name "tartufolli" for potatoes. Then this word was simplified to "tarto" and eventually became the Russian "potato". True, some scientists do not agree with this version of the origin of the word "potato". In their opinion, it is formed from the German words "craft" - "strength" and "teuffel" - "devil". Thus, the free translation of the word "potato" into Russian sounds approximately like "devilish force". This name can be explained by the fact that the potato in Europe, and in Russia too, was initially taken "with hostility" and was even called "the devil's apple". And then they resigned themselves and somehow imperceptibly the potatoes from the "devil's product" turned into "our daily bread."

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