Why do Russians eat potatoes without the skin?

[Martin Votruba]

> Perhaps the idea that the skins are dirty in some way for Russians is
> expressed linguistically in the use of  < ochischat' > for "to peel"

Indeed, John, people have been "cleaning" all their root vegetables in large
parts of Europe, not just in Russia.  They used to be pulled out of soil
soaked with manure and other, more directly delivered natural fertilizers
after all.  There's nothing to peel on a carrot (nor anything obviously
disturbing on the surface as a rationalization of getting rid of the potato
skins may conjure up), but people still saw a needed to scrape the surface
off especially with no running water in the households.  None of that is
new, communist, generated by poverty.  It's an old inherited custom.

Below is a passage by Slavenka Drakulic on another skin-eating-and-culture
issue.  It adds a cross-cultural perspective on how eating potato skins
might be seen from across the Atlantic -- she would have likely made the
same commiserating comment had the person been reported as eating a potato
with its skin.

Martin

votruba "at" pitt "dot" edu


x x x

Slavenka Drakulic, "Pizza in Warsaw, Torte in Prague."

"Right after the overthrow of the Ceauşescu government in Romania in
December 1989, I read a report in the newspaper about life in Bucharest. 
There was a story about a man who ate the first banana in his life.  He was
an older man, a worker, and he said to a reporter shyly that he ate a whole
banana, together with the skin, because he didn’t know that he had to peel
it.  At first, I was moved by the isolation this man was forced to live in,
by the fact that he never read or even heard what to do with a banana.  But
then something else caught my attention: 'It tasted good,' he said.  I can
imagine this man, holding a sweet-smelling, ripe banana in his hand, curious
and excited by it, as by a forbidden fruit.  He holds it for a moment, then
bites.  It tastes strange but 'good.'  It must have been good, even together
with a bitter, tough skin, because it was something unachievable, an object
of desire.  It was not a banana that he was eating, but the promise, the
hope of the future.  So, he liked it no matter what its taste."

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