In article ,
Jon wrote:
Nick, You seem to have more knowledge on this subject as I have never
heard of most of these Varieties:-) Last year I let some ground to a
local commercial grower and he grew mainly Maris Piper, but also some
Maris Peer. He told me these were a salad type potato. We had friends
round for dinner and I made potato salad with two different dressings,
using Peer, Piper and King Edwards. So we had 6 labelled dishes, all
with young potatoes, by no means fully developed. There was a slight
difference in the texture of the different varieties, but the dressing
was more dominant. The net result was we had 6 potato salads that were
all nice, but none of us could really express a preference. Do I learn
from this that most potatoes are suitable for salads as long as they
are young, or there really specialist varieties? Different story for
later in the season - boiling, chipping, mashing etc.

Well, I am no expert :-)

Yes, I agree that most varieties make good salad potatoes when dug
young. Belle de Fontenay is a small, smooth, waxy, well flavoured
variety (and fairly disease resistant in my garden), but I used to
grow Maris Bard and that was and is good. Maris Lane is about a
mile away .... Charlotte is similar to BdF, but more modern and a
better cropper.

We bake a lot of potatoes, and all of King Edward, Champion and Bute
Blues are good bakers. The last is small, with a thick, dark skin,
and is rather like Shetland Black but better flavoured - but a poor
cropper. Champion was apparently Ireland's favourite potato, and I
can see why. A very high dry matter content, almost chestnutty when
freshly dug and very dry and floury when baked - again with a thick
skin. Like King Edward, it also mashes well.


Regards,
Nick Maclaren.