 The introduction of the potato in the second half of the 16th century heavily influenced cuisine thereafter . Great poverty encouraged a subsistence approach to food and by the mid @-@ 19th century the vast majority of the population sufficed with a diet of potatoes and milk . A typical family , consisting of a man , a woman and four children , would eat 18 stone ( 110 kg ) of potatoes a week . Consequently , dishes that are considered as national dishes represent a fundamental unsophistication to cooking , such as the Irish stew , bacon and cabbage , boxty , a type of potato pancake , or colcannon , a dish of mashed potatoes and kale or cabbage . 
