The potato is not the most popular but certainly the most important. When Europe's 15th-century explorers went looking for the riches of the East, they found the West. They also came upon a treasure that would ultimately prove to be more valuable than gold or spice: the potato.
However, it was not until the middle of the 17th century, when Frederick William of Prussia planted them in his garden in Berlin, that any effort was made to grow potatoes in Europe. And it took even longer for the spud to find its place on the world's tables. That didn't happen until Frederick the Great began distributing them to the poor 100 years later.
It was a Frenchman named Parmentier who was the potato's biggest booster. Parmentier developed a taste for them while a prisoner in Germany, and upon his release, returned to France with a bag full of them that he used to cultivate more. His first crop was such a success that he presented a bouquet of creamy potato blossoms to his king, Louis XVI, who stuck a single flower in his buttonhole and gave the rest to his queen, Marie Antoinette. She, in turn, appeared at dinner with potato blossoms worked into an elaborate coiffure. That's all it took. France quickly adopted the potato, and soon the lowly brown tuber was bubbling away in pots all over the country.
"France will thank you some day for having found bread for the poor," Louis XVI told Parmentier. And so it did, naming the now-classic French potato soup potage Parmentier.
