[1] According to legend, the recipe came from the food found in the cooking pots left behind by hastily departing Spanish soldiers after the end of the Siege of Leiden in 1574 during the Eighty Years' War.

As there were few, if any, high points, the Spanish soldiers camping in the fields were essentially flushed out, leaving behind most of their equipment, including according to legend prepared hutspot which was feasted upon by the famished population after being sieged for a year.

The first European record of the potato is as late as 1537, by the Spanish conquistador Juan de Castellanos, and it spread quite slowly throughout Europe from thereon.

[3] In Melibeus (c1386), Chaucer wrote, "Ȝe haue cast alle here wordes in an hochepoche", but that early use probably referred to its legal sense in English law (recorded from 1292) as a blending of properties.

Potch, a traditional Welsh accompaniment to meat dishes, is likewise made with mashed potato, carrot, swede, parsnip and sometimes other root vegetables.