Having crossed the spectacular Piuquenes Pass in the Andes, Charles Darwin had some trouble boiling his potatoes. It was the 1830s; the young Darwin was part of HMS Beagle’s famous second voyage and was studying the geology of South America. These were studies that, along with his observations of the native wildlife, would guide his thinking and later lead him to introduce the theory of evolution by natural selection, along with Alfred George Wallace.
But that’s another story. Let’s get back to those spuds. In his classic travelogue The Voyage of the Beagle, Darwin observed that “the elevation was probably not under 11,000 feet,” which is around 3,350 meters for those who prefer a bit of metric.
“At the place where we slept water necessarily boiled, from the diminished pressure of the atmosphere, at a lower temperature than it does in a less lofty country...
Hence the potatoes, after remaining for some hours in the boiling water, were nearly as hard as ever.” Despite his best efforts, poor Charles just couldn’t get his potatoes to cook. He’d observed that water was boiling at a lower temperature than usual and that it was having a negative impact on his attempts to make dinner.
He wasn't the first, or the last, person to recognise the effect of altitude on boiling temperatures and on cooking. So, what’s going on here? Our mountain loving former school head of science is here to break it down. You see, it all boils down to this.
.. As observed by Darwin, wat.