Champ (food) thick as champ", meaning to be stupid, and to be "as ignorant as champ at a wedding", meaning to be uncultured or boorish (champ being a common everyday dish, not one befitting a banquet celebration). Champ (food) Champ ("brúitín" in Irish) is an Irish dish, made by combining mashed potatoes and chopped spring onion with butter, milk, cheese and optionally, salt and pepper. As recently as the mid-20th century it was sometimes made with stinging nettle rather than spring onions but this is rarely seen now. It is simple and inexpensive to produce. In some areas the dish is also
Instant mashed potatoes particular have been freeze-dried since at least the time of the Inca empire, in the form of chuño; another example is in Japanese Ainu cuisine. , titled "Dehydrate Potatoes and Process of Preparing the Same", and describing a product that was to be reconstituted in hot water, was applied for in 1905 and granted in 1912. Flake-form instant mashed potatoes date back at least to 1954, when two United States Department of Agriculture researchers were issued a patent for "Drum drying of cooked mashed potatoes" (), which describes the end product specifically being "as a thin sheet or flake". In