Boil 4 sweet potatoes until soft. Mash until smooth with 1 tablespoonful of butter, 2 beaten eggs, 1 tablespoonful of brown sugar, ¼ teaspoonful of cinnamon and ¼ cup of milk. Beat well. Put in a buttered pudding-dish; pour over some melted butter; let bake until brown. Serve hot with broiled steak.
A straightforward baked sweet potato puree, written in the telegraphic style of a daily calendar cookbook. The original omits the oven temperature and the bake time, so both need supplying.
- Oven and timingNo temperature is given. A moderate oven, 350F, for 25 to 30 minutes will set the eggs and brown the top; give it a few minutes under the broiler if the surface stays pale.
- Potato size"4 sweet potatoes" gives no weight. Aim for about 2 lb, which yields roughly 3 cups of mash and keeps the egg-to-potato ratio right.
- Boiling versus bakingBoiled sweet potatoes take on water and dilute the flavour. If you prefer, bake them whole at 400F until collapsing, then scoop the flesh; you may then want less than the ¼ cup of milk.
- Cool before the eggsLet the mash drop below scalding before beating in the eggs, or they will scramble in streaks rather than binding the puree.
- Pudding-dishA period pudding-dish is a deep baking dish, round or oval, usually earthenware or ironstone. A 1-quart casserole or a 9-inch pie plate both work; the shallower dish gives more browned surface.
- Sugar and spiceA single tablespoon of brown sugar and a quarter teaspoon of cinnamon is a restrained, savoury-leaning seasoning meant to sit beside steak. Salt is not mentioned but the dish needs about half a teaspoon.
- YieldServes four as a side dish.
Books of this kind — a dish a day, each tagged with a nationality — appear to have been a popular format in American publishing around the turn of the twentieth century, when domestic magazines were selling readers the idea of a cosmopolitan table without much regard for accuracy. The "Belgian" label here seems loose: sweet potatoes are a New World crop that appears never to have taken hold in Belgian home cooking, and the pairing with broiled steak reads as thoroughly American. What the recipe does record is the standing role of sweet potato in the American side-dish repertoire, where it could be enriched with egg and butter and baked until browned.