FRENCH PEASANT COOKERY: HACHIS PARMENTIER

To begin, a word about the history of French cuisine. The majority of the dishes of French country cooking were developed ‘Chez Maman’ at some indefinable time. ‘Hachis Parmentier’ however has distinct provenance, being named for pharmacist Antoine-Augustin Parmentier (1737-1813) who spent his life promoting the potato, about which he had learned while a prisoner of war in Germany. Before Parmentier, the ‘navet’ (turnip) was the preeminent root veg on tables in the Hexagon. In 1773, Parmentier won a prize for showcasing the potato as a useful crop in the event of a famine, notably the failure of wheat. But his evangelising on behalf of the pomme de terre reached its peak with his potato-based dinner for American politician Benjamin Franklin (a ‘Founding Father’ of the USA) at Les Invalides. So starry did Parmentier make the spud that his crop of the veg near Paris required a guard by the Army.