Jack’s Copperclad Jerusalem Artichoke
At least fifteen tribes boiled or
Perhaps the only vegetable native to North America
that has achieved worldwide acclaim, the Jerusalem
artichoke is more appreciated overseas than in its
center of origin in south-central Canada and the
midwestern United States. Its estrangement from
its homeland is perhaps best indicated by the fact
that this openauk or “Canada potato” is now called
Jerusalem artichoke, even though it is neither an
artichoke nor native to Jerusalem. Worse yet, in
the last half century, hundreds of heirloom variet-
ies that were carefully selected by American family
farmers and gardeners for their distinctive flavors,
textures, and hardiness have been all but replaced by
the sunchoke, a single sterile hybrid made between
sunflowers and Jerusalem artichokes.
Remnant wild populations can be found in forty-
four states and seven Canadian provinces, but within
David Cavagnaro
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in fields and gardens.
that range, the historic heirloom cultivars such as
Jack’s Copperclad have grown increasingly rare. This
variety has plump but knobby tubers whose skins
are colored a lovely dark copper or rose-purple. The
tubers themselves have an excellent, subtly sweet
flavor and are found at the base of ten-foot stalks
that bear aboveground a bright display of sunflow-
ers. Jack’s Copperclad is commercially available only
from Horus Botanicals in Salem, Arkansas, and is
endangered. Many other heirlooms of the same ilk
are literally lost within the rural-suburban contin-
uum, no longer known by their historic names nor
celebrated for their unique qualities.
And yet this perennial tuber-bearing sunflower
(Helianthus tuberosus) was once one of the most
widely used root vegetables in North America,
whether wild-harvested or intentionally cultivated
roasted the tubers, sometimes eating them whole but
other times mixing them with acorn meal to fry into
cakes. We can assume that some prehistoric tribes
intentionally transplanted and tended the tubers, for
Samuel de Champlain saw them growing in Native
American gardens at Mallebarre on Nauset Harbor
in Massachusetts on July 21, 1605. Botanist Asa Gray
discerned that the Jerusalem artichoke originated
west of the Mississippi watershed and that it was
probably carried and transplanted eastward through
Native American trade. However, most indigenous
harvesters within its natural range had no need
to intentionally plant it because their practice of
“digging-stick cultivation” enhanced the productivity
of each tuber patch. Over time, there may even have
been selection for larger tubers or different shapes
or flavors. Various “wild” populations of Jerusalem
artichokes have been reported to tolerate freez-
ing temperatures, waterlogging, acidity, alkalinity,
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 different photoperiods, sand, shade, lateritic soils,
virus, bacteria, or weeds.
One of the first written reports about this root
vegetable came from Thomas Hariot, during the
second expedition to establish the first “English
plantation” on Roanoke Island in 1585:
Openauk are a kind of roots of round forme,
some of the bignes of walnuts, some far
greater, which are found in moist & marish
ground growing many together one by another
in ropes, or as thogh they were fastened with
a string. Being boiled or sodden they are a
very good meate.
By 1605, the explorer Samuel de Champlain had
enjoyed their flavor frequently enough to want to
send some of the tubers back from Canada to his
native France. It may be that he had already gathered
or described this plant in Massachusetts as well, for
a book published in 1609 mentions that this vege-
table was known in France even before Champlain
had initiated his exploration of Canada. Among the
French, the vegetable that Champlain likened to an
artichoke became known as topinambour—a country
bumpkin—while the English settling north of the St.
Lawrence River claimed it as the Canada potato.
Exactly when and how the term Jerusalem became
added to this artichoke’s name remains a mystery.
One explanation is that once this root became a staple
food for the Pilgrims, they praised it as the new food
that would nourish a “new Jerusalem.” Alternative
explanations are that “Jerusalem” is simply a mispro-
nunciation of the Italian word for sunflower, girasol,
or of the Dutch place-name Ter-Heusen, a farm village
in Holland where many of these tubers were planted.
In any case, the Jerusalem artichoke or topinambour
has met with three centuries of acclaim in Europe,
and many of the most widely propagated cultivars
come from there. The 1833 edition of Gerard’s Herball
underscores how prolific this plant was in the eyes of
the Europeans:
This wonderfull increasing plant hath grow-
ing up from one root, one, sometimes two,
three or more round green rough hairy
straked stalks, commonly about twelve foot
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David Cavagnaro
high, sometimes sixteene foot high or higher
. . . producing from the increase of one root,
thirty, forty, or fifty in number or more.
Back in the United States, it was at least appreci-
ated as a survival food, as this April 9, 1805, entry
from the journals of Meriwether Lewis indicates:
When we halted for dinner [Sacagawea]
busied herself in serching for the wild arti-
chokes . . . this operation she performed
by penetrating the earth with a sharp stick
about some small collections of drift wood.
Her labour soon proved successful, and she
procurrd a good quantity of these roots.
And yet other American observers gave the plant
decidedly mixed reviews. In 1681, Reverend John
Banister of Virginia was already discounting its
value in his Natural History, claiming that “the
Batatas Canadensis, or Jerusalem Artichokes are
little esteemed of here, yet it is sometimes used to
brew with when corn is scarce.” In 1768, Miller wrote
this disparaging note in The Gardeners Dictionary:
“The Jerusalem Artichokes . . . are very subject to
trouble the belly by their windy quality, which hath
brought them almost in decline.”
John Goodyer, who had pioneered their cultivation
by English-speaking farmers in the 1600s, was more
to the point: “In my judgement, which way soever
they be drest and eaten they stir up and cause a filthie
loathesome stinking winde with the bodie, thereby
causing the belly to bee much pained and tormented,
and are a meat more fit for swine, than men.”
The source of that “windiness” may also be the
tubers’ greatest asset for modern consumers, for it
is due to the slow release of inulin, a complex poly-
saccharide they contain. Slowly digested and broken
down into fructose and other carbohydrates, inulin
serves to protect those who suffer from diabetes from
dramatic changes in blood sugar levels and from
pancreatic stress.
Fortunately, the Jerusalem artichoke still had a
few champions, including none other than George
Washington and Thomas Jefferson. In a May 2, 1817,
letter to an agricultural magazine editor, Tristan
Dalton, Jefferson favored this native tuber (or intro-
duced varieties of the same) as a winter feed for live-
stock: “With respect to field culture of vegetables for
cattle, instead of the carrot and potato recommended
by yourself, and the magazine, and the beet by others,
we find the Jerusalem artichoke best for winter.”
During the decades immediately following
Jefferson’s promotion of it, a good number of vari-
4/2/08 4:48:20 PM
 eties of the Jerusalem artichoke were selected, and
these revived interest in the vegetable among chefs.
In the 1847 cookbook The Carolina Housewife, there
are instructions for pickling this kind of artichoke,
and much the same recipe has persisted in the
Carolinas to this day. In his 1865 classic, Field and
Garden Vegetables of America, Fearing Burr noted at
least four exceptionally flavorful varieties that had
been developed by backyard plant selection:
For a long period there was but a single
variety cultivated, or even known. Recent
experiments in the use of seeds as a means
of propagation have developed new kinds,
varying greatly in their size, form, and color,
possessing little of the watery and insipid
character of the heretofore grown Jerusalem
Artichoke, and nearly or quite equaling the
potato in flavor and excellence.
From the early nineteenth through the early twen-
tieth century, American gardeners and horticulturists
selected and named over 1,300 forms, heirloom stocks,
and unusual strains of the Jerusalem artichokes. Only
200 of these heirlooms have survived into the twenty-
first century, and most of them are now available to
the public only on a limited basis from experimental
farms, botanical gardens, and germplasm reposito-
ries. Aside from the sterile hybrid sunchoke, which
can be propagated vegetatively only by replanting
tubers, there are only ten cultivars of the Jerusalem
artichoke that have persisted to any extent in garden
catalogs of the United States and Canada: Boston
Red, Dwarf Sunray, French White Improved, Fuseau,
Golden Nugget, Jack’s Copperclad, Jerusalem White,
Mammoth French White, Mulles Rose, Stampede,
Sutton’s New White, and Veitch’s Improved Long
White. Three are of particular interest as American
heirlooms: the Boston Red, which has large knobby
tubers with rose-red skin; Jack’s Copperclad, which
has dark coppery purple, excellent-tasting tubers; and
the Mulles Rose, which has large white tubers with
rose-purple-fleshed eyes. All of these may now be
considered endangered because of the predominance
of sterile hybrid sunchokes in the marketplace.
The recipe included here is adapted from Joseph
Earl Dabney’s fine collection, Smokehouse Ham,
Spoon Bread, and Scuppernong Wine.
RAFT final pgs.indd 73
South Carolina Chow-Chow with
Jack’s Copperclad Artichokes
1 gallon Jack’s Copperclad Jerusalem artichokes mince the tomatoes, peppers, celery, and onions,
1 cup sea salt then cover them with water and the remaining
1 quart (4 large) green tomatoes, coarsely ¾ cup salt in a second large bowl. Drain the arti-
chopped chokes, rinse them in cold water, then chop them
6 large red bell peppers coarsely. Drain the salt water from the minced
6 large green bell peppers vegetables but reserve this liquid.
1 large rib pale green celery Next, pour the apple cider vinegar into a large
1 quart (8 medium) Vidalia onions saucepan and combine the flour, turmeric, and
2 quarts apple cider vinegar sugar with the vinegar. Beat this mix with a
½ cup bleached wheat flour whisk, then add the dry mustard and the mustard,
3 tablespoons turmeric dill, and celery seeds. Bring this mixture to a
6 cups turbinado sugar boil. Add the vegetables and bring all the ingre-
½ cup dry mustard dients back to a boil. Cook only 1 minute, stir-
5 tablespoons mustard seed ring vigorously so as not to let anything stick to
2 tablespoons dill seed the pan. Finally, add the chopped artichokes and
2 tablespoons celery seed stir them in, but don’t let them cook any further.
Pour the reserved liquid from the vegetables
Scrub the artichokes with a brush to remove over the artichokes. Spoon the artichokes and
any spots. Place them in a large glass bowl and liquid into hot, clean pint jars, filling them up to
cover them with cold water mixed with ¼ cup a quarter inch from the top. Seal at once. Yields
salt. Refrigerate overnight. The next morning, 12 pints.
Further Reading
Ammundsen, C. Rene. “Jerusalem Artichoke.” In the “Homestead and Garden” category of the “This and That”
website. Accessed April 22, 2007, from www.fogwhistle.ca/thisandthat/artichoke.htm.
Boswell, Victor. R. Studies of the Culture and Certain Varieties of the Jerusalem Artichoke. Washington, D.C.: U.S.
Department of Agriculture, 1936.
Burr, Fearing Jr. Field and Garden Vegetables of America. Boston: J. E. Tilton, 1865.
Champlain, Samuel D. The Voyages of Samuel de Champlain, 1604–1616. New York: Simon and Schuster, 1922.
Dabney, Joseph E. Smokehouse Ham, Spoon Bread, and Scuppernong Wine: The Folklore and Art of Southern
Appalachian Cooking. Nashville: Cumberland House Publishing, 1998.
Gray, Asa. Manual of the Botany of the Northern United States. New York: Ivison, Blakeman and Company, 1890.
Hariot, Thomas. 1588 Narrative of the First English Plantation of Virginia. London: B. Quatrich, 1893 (reprint).
Miller, Phillip. The Gardener’s Dictionary. London: privately printed, 1768.
Moulton, Gary E., ed. The Definitive Journals of the Lewis and Clark Expedition. Lincoln: University of Nebraska
Press, 2002.
Rutledge, Sarah. The Carolina Housewife, or House and Home, by a Lady of Charleston. Charleston, South Carolina:
W. R. Babcock, 1847. Reprinted in Columbia: University of South Carolina Press, 1969.
Shoemaker, D. N. The Jerusalem Artichoke as a Crop Plant. USDA Technical Bulletin no. 33. Washington, D.C.: U.S.
Government Printing Office, 1927.
Waters, L., D. Davis, J. Riehle, and M. Weins. Jerusalem Artichoke Trials. St. Paul: Department of Horticulture,
University of Minnesota, 1981.
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