Talk:Instant mashed potato

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[edit] Dehydrated potato flakes (moved from WP:RD)

Who invented dehydrated potato flakes? We don't seem to have an article about them. We do have Smash potato mix, but it does not address the question.

It is widely claimed that Canadian Edward A. Asselbergs invented them in 1962. [1] On the other hand, Idahoan Foods claims to have been founded in 1960 with the express purpose of producing instant mashed potatoes [2]. I have not found any source that devotes more than one throw-away sentence to the question, and astoundingly, Google does not know of a single document containing both of the words "Asselbergs" and "Idahoan" [3].

Any ideas? Thanks — Pekinensis 15:11, 2 August 2005 (UTC)

Well, Asselbergs definitely was issued a U.S. patent for "preparation of dehydrated cooked mashed potato" U.S. Patent 3260607 , which claimed priority from a Canadian application from 1961. However in his patent application he makes it clear that there are preexisting forms of instant mash potatos in the prior art, in two forms: granules and flakes, the latter of which are dehydrated. For this he cites Canadian patent 561,119, which seems to be the primary form of the prior art he is contending with throughout the application in differentiating his method as unique. One of his references in the paper is a U.S. Department of Agriculture publication from 1954 on "Potato Flakes; a New Form of Dehydrated Mashed Potatoes", which makes me think that they must date from at least that period. --Fastfission 21:07, 2 August 2005 (UTC)

On the Dept of Agr.: two US Department of Agriculture researchers were issued a patent for "Drum drying of cooked mashed potatoes" in 1954 (U.S. Patent 2759832 ), which must be what he is referring to. It describes the end product specifically being "as a thin sheet or flake". Another patent by Dept. of Agriculture researchers issued in 1957 (U.S. Patent 2780552 ) speaks extensively about flakes specifically as well. --Fastfission 21:14, 2 August 2005 (UTC)

Also, check out U.S. Patent 1025373  -- a patent on "Dehydrate Potatoes and Process of Preparing the Same", application issued in 1905 and granted in 1912! While it doesn't describe them as flakes, it clearly describes how they could be turned into a wonderful food product with just a little hot water.

So I suppose a lot of this depends on what the definition of "dehydrated potato flakes" is, as "instant mashed potatoes" seems to have been around for almost a century! I haven't read this over word for word, of course, so I might be missing something.

(If you're wondering how I did this: I searched for "Asselbergs, Edward" on the UK patent database, which has a lot of US and Canadian patents in it too, and then took the US patent number there and plugged it into the USPTO website, and then took the cited reference numbers from there and re-plugged them in. I have some scripts which make this sort of thing very quick, which helps a lot). --Fastfission 21:09, 2 August 2005 (UTC)

In all likelihood - some little old lady hundreds of years ago. ¦ Reisio 21:16, 2005 August 2 (UTC)

This is great information; thank you! I really hadn't thought to look at the patent records. I'll try to work this into a stubby article. — Pekinensis 23:31, 2 August 2005 (UTC)