There is no tidy starter, main course, and dessert here. Van Gogh's life traces a line from the North to the South: first the black table of the peasants of Brabant and Drenthe, where they eat a pot of potatoes by lamplight, washed down with coffee; then the Provençal boarding house in Arles, where the poor artist shares the oil, garlic, and bread of the workers. The meal structure is that of necessity: a cheap starchy base, a little fat or dairy to keep going, plenty of black coffee to work, and a feast reduced to a large dish of garlic on Sundays. It is a studio cuisine, eaten quickly, between two canvases.

More than an ingredient, it is Van Gogh's emblem: *The Potato Eaters* (1885) is his first major canvas, where peasants with earthy hands share this tuber under an oil lamp. The potato — humble, earthy, nourishing — connects all his cooking, from the miserable North to the South.