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Sweet Potatoes Sliced
Steam until done, remove the skin carefully, cut them in longitudinal slices quarter of inch thick, and pour over each slice, as it is put into the dish, a syrup made of butter and sugar, equal parts and boiled together. -Mrs. A. F. Aikens.
A short, forgiving recipe that depends almost entirely on not oversteaming the potatoes. Slices cut a quarter-inch thick must hold their shape under hot syrup.
- Steam, don't boilWhole sweet potatoes in a steamer basket over simmering water take 30-45 minutes depending on size; test with a skewer at the thickest point. They should be tender but still firm enough to slice cleanly, so pull them a few minutes before they collapse.
- PeelingSkins slip off easily while the potatoes are still hot. Hold each one in a folded towel and push the skin away with a paring knife rather than peeling in strips.
- The syrup, in proportionThe recipe says only 'equal parts,' without specifying weight or volume; either reading gives a workable syrup. For roughly two pounds of potatoes, something like 1/2 cup butter to 1/2 cup sugar. Melt them together and boil only until the sugar is fully dissolved and the mixture is glossy; long boiling will take it toward candy and it will set hard on the slices.
- Butter and sugar will separateThis is not an emulsified sauce. Stir it as you spoon it over each layer, or add a tablespoon of the steaming water to hold it together briefly.
- Layer as you goThe instruction to pour syrup over each slice "as it is put into the dish" matters: poured all at once at the end, the syrup runs to the bottom and the top layer stays dry.
- ServingThe recipe gives no quantities; on the two-pound assumption above, four to six servings as a side. The dish is best warm; if it stands, reheat covered in a moderate oven (about 325F) for 15-20 minutes -- the recipe itself gives no oven instruction.
- Which potatoThe orange, moist-fleshed varieties sold as "yams" in American supermarkets are sweet potatoes and work here. The drier, pale-fleshed kinds hold their slices better but need more syrup.
Sweet potatoes dressed with butter and sugar run through nineteenth- and early twentieth-century American cookery in dozens of small variations, from this plain sliced version to the baked, syrup-basted dishes that eventually acquired marshmallows. The vegetable was a staple long before it was a treat, particularly in the South, and sugar was added to a crop that is already sugary. Contributions signed with a subscriber's name, as here with Mrs. A. F. Aikens, were a familiar form in the community and promotional cookbooks of the period, and the brevity of the entry is characteristic.