Thread: Jersey Royals
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Old 15-06-2018, 02:44 PM posted to uk.rec.gardening
Jeff Layman[_2_] Jeff Layman[_2_] is offline
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First recorded activity by GardenBanter: Sep 2008
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Default Jersey Royals

On 15/06/18 11:07, Chris Hogg wrote:
On Fri, 15 Jun 2018 08:24:43 +0100, Jeff Layman
wrote:

On 14/06/18 23:05, David wrote:
I was cleaning some Jersey Royals this evening when I started wondering.
I seem to remember in the dark and distant days of my youth that Jersey
Royals had a red eye.
No sign of any now.
Is my memory wrong?


I don't remember any JRs that I have bought having a red eye.

IMO the JRs you can buy today are almost tasteless compared to those of
20 years ago. There are many tastier varieties of "new" potatoes which
don't carry the premium of JRs.


If Sacha were still posting here, who AIUI grew up on Jersey or
certainly had close family connections there, the flavour of JR's was
because it was traditional in the Channel Isles heavily to manure the
potato fields with seaweed every year, locally called vraic, a
practice which has died out, being quite labour intensive. There were
a couple of postage stamps issued shortly after the war showing the
practice. See https://bit.ly/2sXwyA0


Indeed. The cessation of seaweed use for Jersey Royals was mentioned to
me time ago as a possible reason for the change in flavour. However,
according to the paper at
http://www.bahs.org.uk/AGHR/ARTICLES/14n2a4.pdf, potatoes when vraiced
were inferior to those not treated that way (see bottom of second column
on page 125):
"... and though it increases the crop of potatoes, it is said to make
them grow knotty and of an inferior quality." It doesn't mention
flavour, though.

--

Jeff