Modern Irish cuisine rises from ruins of the past

By John McKenna

updated 10:43 a.m. ET March 16, 2008

In honor of St. Patrick's Day, a day when everyone's a wee bit Irish, we present a guide to the evolution of Irish cuisine past and present.

For most of the last two centuries, Irish cooking has been dominated by one terrible event: the dreadful famine of the mid-1840s, when the failure of the potato crop — on which the peasant population depended — led to a savage death toll and a global diaspora of Irish people. After this experience, traditional staples came to be regarded as "famine food" — a necessity, and nothing more. The idea of an indigenous fine cuisine seemed ridiculous, and the country's native ingredients were held in low regard.

For thousands of years before the potato famine, however, Ireland's people enjoyed an atmosphere of bounty. According to the folklorist Brid Mahon, the first settlers "hunted and trapped the red deer and wild pig; they fished the rivers for salmon, trout, and eels, and snared pigeon, duck, and grouse." When agriculture began, farmers exploited a benign climate where grass grew year-round. Even when, around 500 BC, temperatures cooled to their current levels, soft rains and the moderating influence of the Gulf Stream created a temperate land where wheat, barley, oats, and rye were easily cultivated and grazing cows, sheep, and goats produced superior dairy products.

Abundance followed by deprivation
Throughout the Middle Ages, Ireland's population exploited this land of plenty. The medieval tale The Vision of MacConglinne is full of rhapsodic descriptions of hearty sausages and blood puddings, crusty bread and sweet butter, fresh milk and strong ale. A tradition of unsurpassed hospitality reflected this abundance: A traveler crossing the country could expect to be welcomed with food and lodging at every farmstead he passed.

But then everything changed. Introduced from the New World in the 17th century, the potato became not just a food but the stuff of life itself. Easily grown, it enabled a population explosion — as Irish food writer Darina Allen writes, "With only an acre or two of land a farmer could grow enough potatoes to support his whole family." There were rumblings of trouble before the famine, but as the scholar Redcliffe Salaman notes, "So completely had the potato woven itself into the web of the life and thought of the people, that no greater attention was given to such warnings than would have been the case had they been told that the rains would cease to fall from heavens on their fields."

The rains did not fail to fall. But the potato did fail, when a fungus called phytophthora infestans destroyed several successive crops, leading to widespread starvation.

In the aftermath, a pall was cast over Irish attitudes toward food. For the lower classes, traditional recipes were eaten — and enjoyed — but never discussed. For the bourgeoisie, "fine dining" meant imitating French cooking, a habit that remained until the latter part of the 20th century.

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