Solanum tuberosum
Potatoes are starchy tubers and a longstanding Maine field and storage crop. Aroostook County became especially closely associated with commercial potato production.1
Potato is a New World crop, domesticated in the Andes before spreading worldwide; it belongs to the nightshade family with tomato.2
Maine’s potato identity is partly a storage identity. The crop fits the state’s short growing season, then carries through winter when kept cool, dark, and well ventilated. Aroostook’s broad fields made the potato a commercial crop, while household cellars made it a dependable local staple.1
That storage life begins with curing. Mature tubers are left to toughen their skins after the vines die back, then kept near 45–50°F so their metabolism stays slow without pushing starch toward sugar. A potato held too cold can fry dark and bitter because some of its starch is converted to glucose and fructose; a potato exposed to light may turn green as it accumulates chlorophyll alongside higher levels of bitter glycoalkaloids.3
The tuber is a swollen underground stem, not a root. Its “eyes” are buds, which is why a piece of potato can grow into a new plant when it includes a live eye.4
Cooking behavior follows dry matter. Mealy potatoes pack more starch into their cells, which swell and separate into a dry, fluffy texture; waxy types hold together more firmly.3 Cold storage complicates that distinction because some starch converts to sugars below the ideal range of about 45–50°F, making fried potatoes brown too quickly and sometimes taste bitter.3
The same tuber can therefore change character without changing variety. A newly dug potato is moister and sweeter, while a cured, mature tuber has a firmer skin and a more developed earthy flavor. Yellow-fleshed potatoes get their color from carotenoids, while purple and blue varieties carry anthocyanin pigments; these differences are part of the food’s structure, not merely a surface decoration.3
Footnotes
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University of Maine Cooperative Extension, “Food & Nutrition for the Home Gardener,” accessed July 17, 2026. ↩ ↩2
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National Park Service, “American Latino Theme Study: Food,” accessed July 17, 2026. ↩
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Harold McGee, On Food and Cooking: The Science and Lore of the Kitchen, rev. ed. (Scribner, 2004), PDF p. 316; John Vaughan and Catherine Geissler, The New Oxford Book of Food Plants, 2nd ed. (Oxford University Press, 2009), p. 198 (PDF p. 233). ↩ ↩2 ↩3 ↩4
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Penn State Extension, “Potatoes in the Garden and the Kitchen,” accessed July 17, 2026. ↩