Potatoes are one of the cheapest and most convenient sources of vitamin C, potassium and fibre, especially if you also eat their nutritious skin. For people who tuck into huge mounds of chips daily, the potato is probably their main source of vitamin C. Sadly, however, there is no evidence that the humble spud has the aphrodisiac qualities attributed to it by Falstaff in Shakespeare’s The Merry Wives of Windsor.

It’s thought that the potato has grown in the Peruvian Andes for more than six millennia. Not to be confused with the sweet potato (Impomoea batatas) from the Caribbean, which gives the potato its name, the potato (Solanum tuberosum) was taken to Europe by the Spanish in the early 16th century. The legend that Sir Walter Raleigh took the potato from Virginia to his Irish estates in around 1585 is flawed by the fact that there were no potatoes in Virginia until the 18th century.

The earliest hard evidence of potato cultivation in Ireland (where the potato thrived in the wet climate) dates from 1640. The Irish became so dependent on the potato that a million of them died in 1846 when blight caused crop failure. The truth of this tragedy is that potatoes are so nourishing that it’s possible to live quite healthily on an almost exclusive diet of them — until supply is cut.

Once the potato began to spread across the world there was no stopping it, as different varieties evolved or were bred and it could be grown in almost any climate or soil. Today the world grows enough potatoes annually to cover a four-lane motorway circling the globe six times.

Although the potato has travelled a long way from the confines of its South American origins, it hasn’t always been cordially received. When spuds first arrived in Europe they were initially denounced by religious leaders on the grounds that they must be devilish imports because they were not mentioned in the Bible.

There was disquiet, too, in the notion that because the potato grows underground and is dirty, it must be, in some obscure way, nasty or born of blackness and evil. Not that this seemed to be a problem for the French, who rather charmingly named the potato ‘pomme de terre’ or ‘apple of the earth’. However, in some parts of Europe (especially in England) the potato came to be associated with poverty by the wealthy classes, who tended to feed themselves on an unadulterated diet of meat.

Today the potato is one of the most delicious, versatile and healthy foods at our disposal. It has become so much more than just a side vegetable accompanying other foods. Lightly salted or rubbed in oil, put into the oven whole in their skins and served as ‘jacket potatoes’ (or ‘baked taties’, as the Scots call them) with a whole range of fillings, potatoes become a gourmet main meal in their own right.

Creamy mashed potatoes can be used in all sorts of baked pies or as a thickener for sauces. Use low-fat yoghurt to achieve the creaminess without the calories. You don’t need to peel the spuds if you mash them finely with an electric masher. If you spread mashed potato thickly on the base and up the sides of a flan dish, brush it with beaten egg and crisp it in the oven for a quarter of an hour or so, it makes an acceptable low-fat alternative to the traditional pastry case for quiche.