Antoine-Augustin Parmentier

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Antoine Parmentier

Antoine-Augustin Parmentier (Montdidier August 12, 1737 – December 13, 1813) is remembered as a vocal promoter of cultivating the potato as a food source (for humans) in France and throughout Europe. However, this was not his only contribution to nutrition and health: he was responsible for the first mandatory smallpox vaccination campaign (under Napoleon starting in 1805, when he was Inspector-General of the Health Service), he was a pioneer in the extraction of sugar from sugar beets, he founded a school of breadmaking, and he studied methods of conserving food, including refrigeration.

While serving as an army pharmacist for France in the Seven Years' War, he was captured by the Prussians, and, in prison in Prussia was faced with eating potatoes, known to the French only as hog feed. The potato had been introduced to Europe long before (as early as 1640), but (outside of Ireland) was usually used for animal feed. The king of Prussia Frederick II had required peasants to cultivate the plants under severe penalties and had provided them cuttings. In 1748 the French Parliament had actually forbidden the cultivation of the potato (on the ground that it was thought to cause leprosy among other things), and this law remained on the books in Parmentier's time.

From his return to Paris in 1763 he pursued his pioneering studies in nutritional chemistry. His prison experience came to mind in 1772 when he proposed (in a contest sponsored by the Academy of Besançon) use of the potato as a source of nourishment for dysenteric patients. He won the prize on behalf of the potato in 1773.

Thanks largely to Parmentier's efforts, the Paris Faculty of Medicine declared potatoes edible in 1772. Still, resistance continued, and Parmentier was prevented from using his test garden at the Invalides hospital, where he was pharmacist, by the religious community that owned the land, whose complaints resulted in the suppression of Parmentier's post at the Invalides.

Parmentier therefore began a series of publicity stunts for which he remains famous today, hosting dinners (at which potato dishes featured prominently) to which he invited luminaries such as Benjamin Franklin and Antoine Lavoisier, giving bouquets of potato blossoms to the King and Queen, and surrounding the potato patch at Sablons, near Neuilly, west of Paris, where 50 arpents of impoverished ground had been allotted him by order of Louis XVI, with armed guards to attract publicity— then withdrawing the guards at night so the cupidous crowd could "steal" the potatoes.

The first step in the acceptance of the potato was the year of bad harvests, 1785, when the scorned potatoes staved off famine in the north of France. The final step in the acceptance of the potato in French society may have been the siege of the (first) Paris Commune in 1795, during which potatoes were grown on a large scale, even in the Tuileries Gardens, to reduce the famine caused by the siege.

Parmentier's agronomic interests covered a wide range of concerns, where he saw improved techniques would improve the human lot: his published researches expressed his observations touching bread-baking, cheese-making, grain storage, cornmeal (maize) and chestnut flour, mushroom culture, mineral waters, wine-making, improved sea biscuit and a host of others of interest to the Physiocrats.

Parmentier is buried in the Père Lachaise Cemetery in Paris, and is memorialized by a stop in the Paris Métro. At Montdidier, his bronze statue surveys Place Parmentier from its high socle, while below in full marble relief, seed potatoes are distributed to a grateful peasant [1].

[edit] Dishes named after Antoine-Augustin Parmentier

In Potage Parmentier (Cream of Potato and Leek Soup) or any dish that is served "Parmentier", potatoes (especially mashed or boiled) are a major ingredient, but the classic dish called "parmentier" is very similar to cottage pie: it consists of a mixture of mashed potatoes (ie, boiled skinless potatoes, physically mashed and then made smooth by the addition of milk or cream) with finely ground beef (cooked before grinding). The ground beef can be mixed throughout the mashed potatoes or kept as a distinct layer in the middle. Common additional ingredients and seasonings include salt, pepper, chopped onions, chopped garlic, and a generous helping of butter. The whole dish is baked briefly at high temperature to form a golden brown crust on the top.

Parmentier's relative, André Parmentier (1780-1830) attained distinction as a horticulturist in the United States.