Why wasn't the earth apple a more successful crop?

The earth apple are a north American crop which made it to Europe, it was widely used even before the potato, but today it's a relative rare crop. It gives a higher calorie yield than potatoes, but prefer somewhat better soil, it's also one of the hardier crop, to the degree that it's often treated as a weed today.
 
Are you thinking of the yacón? (I had to google it)

I have no idea why it wasn't adopted more widely. Mind you, it took a while for Amerindian crops to be adopted in Europe IOTL. Maybe it gets adopted instead of the potato ITTL?
 
potatoes exist maybe?

Sunroot have a larger yield. Potatoes are superior because they can grow in worse soil, but sunroot should have at least competed with beets, which grow in similar soil, to be a fodder crop if nothing else. The crop was also very widespread in northern Europe, but for some reason it fell somewhat out of use, and ended up mostly a kitchen garden crop or a weed. It's not the only crops which did so dandelion, goutweed and common nettle was all crops, which fell out of use in north Europe. The only thing they had in common was, that they're very hardy and became weeds.
 
A line from the wikipedia page probably explains it:

Gerard's Herbal
, printed in 1621, quotes the English planter John Goodyer on Jerusalem artichokes: "which way soever they be dressed and eaten, they stir and cause a filthy loathsome stinking wind within the body, thereby causing the belly to be pained and tormented, and are a meat more fit for swine than men."

Nobody wants that.
 
A line from the wikipedia page probably explains it:

Gerard's Herbal
, printed in 1621, quotes the English planter John Goodyer on Jerusalem artichokes: "which way soever they be dressed and eaten, they stir and cause a filthy loathsome stinking wind within the body, thereby causing the belly to be pained and tormented, and are a meat more fit for swine than men."

Nobody wants that.
Is that eaten raw or cooked?

It could be just a matter of getting your gut flora used to all the inulin, taking a little at a time before you can eat it regularly. Clearly its prior domestication means that at least some people could digest it just fine.

Of course, that makes it a difficult crop to spread if it isn't immediately digestible by everyone (some people may already have flora healthy enough to take it on).
 
I know I have no problem eating it and neither do my family. Also the same description could be made for beans or cabbage, both which are eaten regular today. Yes it cause gas, but it's not the only crop which do that.
 
As regular consumer of Jerusalem artichoke/sunchokes (those are the two names i use) I don't havr any gur problems while eating them. But then again, i'm eating them as an extra vegetarble to add to soups to add flavour rather than eating them as a staple. the one big objection i have to jerusalem artichokes is their flavour. it's not an unpleasant flavour but it's much stronger than beets and turnips so it's hard to make a dish with them in it taste like anything else.
 
Got it. I got confused because googling suggests the English once called potatoes earth apples.

The Dutch word for Potato is 'aardappel', which literally translates as 'earth apple', AFAIK 'Erdapfel' is also used in some German dialects even though the official German word is 'Kartoffel' (derived the Italian word for a truffle), and of course the French use 'pomme de terre' ('earth apple'). Anyway it doesn't surprise me, that the English once also used 'earth apple' to refer to potatoes.
TBH naturally the first association I had, when reading earth apple, was the potato; is this an ATL were English uses the word earth apple instead of potato?

The common Dutch word for this crop is 'aardpeer', which means 'earth pear'; it needed to be distinguished from the 'aardappel' :). (Though 'topinamboer', 'jeruzalemartisjok' ('Jerusalem artichoke') and knolzonnebloem ('root sunflower' not 'sunflower root', which means something different), however the latter two are less common than 'topinamboer' or 'aardpeer').
 
Only as an eater/grower of the plant:
  1. Wasn't that a century when vegetables were still considered "unhealthy"? So even a bit more gas than usual would put the Jerusalem artichoke into the barely edible, not worth the planting effort category.
  2. The tuber is ready for harvest in November - given that it does seem have a mild tendency to rot ( if the autumn rains soak the soil) combined with the autumn weather in Northern Europe, wouldn't that put it at a higher risk of failure, and therefore mark it as a non-reliable food source?
  3. Soil quality: in the alpine region, the potato was prized for tolerating the somewhat cooler nights/shorter lighthours/shorter grow season better than wheat, but mostly because it could make productive soils otherwise too poor for...well, most valuable coltures. If the J. artichoke needs richer soils, then it won't find room in that niche.
 
@Jürgen, @telynk, @colleoni : How do y'all eat/prepare them? Do you eat it raw?

  1. Soil quality: in the alpine region, the potato was prized for tolerating the somewhat cooler nights/shorter lighthours/shorter grow season better than wheat, but mostly because it could make productive soils otherwise too poor for...well, most valuable coltures. If the J. artichoke needs richer soils, then it won't find room in that niche.
Do you know if it does? I'm asking because you said you grew them.
 
@Jürgen, @telynk, @colleoni : How do y'all eat/prepare them? Do you eat it raw?


Do you know if it does? I'm asking because you said you grew them.

Eh, not especially fond of them (too much work to either clean the skin or peel it off) but definitely cooked. Either boiled in broth and pureed into a soup or cut in chunks and baked in the oven, just like potatoes.
I grow a couple of rows of potatoes in a sandy soil with a very gravelly base, while the J. artichoke gets a comfy spot in the vegetable garden, with black/clay soil for at least 2 yards going down. Doesn't complain about lack of water in the summer, on the contrary, but I have seen marked differences when a rootstock ended up out of the garden and into the "poor" soil: the aerial part was 20-30 cm shorter than its better-placed sibling, and the roots had smaller diameter.*

*which means even more clean-up work by edible part. No thanks.
 
@Jürgen, @telynk, @colleoni : How do y'all eat/prepare them? Do you eat it raw?

You can eat them raw, but the normal way to treat them are like potatoes, everything you make with potatoes you can make with them.

I think mixed mashed potatoes and sunroot do well together, I have used it in sheepherds pie.

You can also make soup with it, and it taste wonderful. You make a thick soup with it and put small pierces of fried bacon on the top.

At last if the soup are thick enough it can be used as sauce to meat and boiled cabbage.


Do you know if it does? I'm asking because you said you grew them.

They grow best in hummus rich soil, while potatoes do well in sandy soil.
 
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Yeah, we call his "jerusalem artichoke" Topinambour
I think it was fairly widely used in France before WWII. However, when food was rationed, topinambour is basically all that was left unrequisitioned and the French spent four years eating topinambour all the time.

What I'm saying is don't talk about topinambour to the older French population, they might punch you. Probably why it's almost disappeared now
 
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