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Sweet Potatoes, Southern Style
Peel cold, boiled sweet potatoes and cut lengthwise in slices onehalf inch thick. Arrange in layers in a well-greased quart baking dish. Cover each layer generously with brown sugar and dots of butter, a sprinkle of salt and pepper. Continue until dish is full. Add one cup hot water and bake in hot oven until liquor is "syrupy" and potatoes are brown on top.
A candied sweet potato casserole built from potatoes boiled the day before. The whole dish turns on evaporation: the cup of water must cook down to syrup, so the pan and the heat matter more than the timing.
- Oven temperatureA "hot oven" in a book of this period is generally reckoned at about 400-450F. That heat is what drives off the water and caramelizes the sugar; a moderate oven leaves you with sweet potatoes sitting in sweet liquid.
- Quart baking dishTake the size literally. A quart dish holds the layers close and keeps the syrup deep enough to glaze; spread the same amount across a 9x13 pan and the liquid will scorch before it thickens.
- Boiled cold potatoesAbout 2 lb of sweet potatoes, boiled whole in their skins until just tender, then cooled completely. Cold, firm slices hold their shape through layering; freshly boiled hot ones break apart under the spoon.
- Quantities the recipe omitsFor a quart dish, figure roughly 1/2 to 3/4 cup brown sugar and 3 to 4 tablespoons butter distributed across three or four layers. "Generously" here means the sugar should be visible on each layer, not dusted.
- Reading the syrupBake uncovered; expect somewhere in the region of 45 minutes to an hour, but go by the pan rather than the clock. It is done when the liquid at the edges pulls into slow, glossy bubbles and coats a spoon. Baste the top once or twice toward the end to get the browning the recipe asks for.
- Salt and pepperThe black pepper is not a misprint and should not be dropped. It, plus a good pinch of salt per layer, is the only thing keeping this from reading as dessert.
- YieldA quart dish serves four to six as a side. It reheats well, covered, at 325F, though the top loses its crust.
Candied sweet potatoes of this kind appear all through American cookbooks from the late nineteenth century onward, often labeled "Southern" -- the sweet potato was strongly associated with Southern cooking, and the tag signaled a certain homeliness to Northern readers. What is worth noticing here is the frugality of the method: the recipe assumes you already have cold boiled sweet potatoes on hand, left over from an earlier meal. Brown sugar rather than the marshmallows that would arrive in the 1910s and 1920s puts this squarely in the older tradition, closer to a stovetop candied yam than to the holiday casserole it eventually became.