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To Fry Sweet Potatoes
Parboil and cut in thick slices, sprinkling over them pepper, salt, and sugar. Fry with a slice of fat pork. Take from the pan, sift over them pounded cracker, and serve.--Mrs. S. T.
A short frying recipe that assumes a cast-iron pan already carrying pork fat. The instructions are terse but complete; the only real decisions are how far to parboil and how thick to cut.
- Parboil shortBoil whole unpeeled sweet potatoes 10-12 minutes, until a knife enters the outer half-inch but meets resistance at the core. Fully soft potatoes fall apart in the pan and will not take a crust. Cool them before slicing; warm sweet potato crumbles under the knife.
- Thick slicesHalf an inch is about right. Thinner rounds scorch before the interior finishes, given the sugar sprinkled over them.
- The slice of fat porkSalt pork or streaky bacon. Render it slowly first so you have two or three tablespoons of fat in the pan, then fry the potatoes in it. The pork itself is flavoring and grease, not a garnish, though it is good eaten alongside.
- Sugar means browningSugar and browning -- The sugar is sprinkled on with the pepper and salt, and it will also help the slices color, so the pan darkens fast; keep the heat at medium and turn the slices once, three to four minutes a side, rather than fussing at them.
- Pounded crackerNineteenth-century soda or water crackers, crushed fine, used the way we now use breadcrumbs. Unsalted saltines or plain water crackers rolled under a pin give the same dry, faintly toasty dusting. Sift it over off the heat so it does not burn.
- YieldTwo medium sweet potatoes, about 1 1/4 lb, serve three or four as a side dish.
Housekeeping in Old Virginia (1879), compiled by Marion Cabell Tyree from contributions by named and initialed Virginia housewives, is full of these one-line recipes credited to a neighbor or relative -- "Mrs. S. T." is doing what dozens of other contributors do in the book, handing over a family method rather than a tested formula. Sweet potatoes were a staple field and garden crop across the Upper South, cheap, storable through winter in a straw-lined pit or cellar, and cooked in every register from ash-roasted to pie. Frying them in pork fat fits the broader pattern of Southern vegetable cookery of the period: the household kept salt pork year-round, and it seasoned a great deal. The pounded-cracker finish is the more dated touch, belonging to an era when crackers were a pantry standard and were crushed for coatings, thickeners and puddings alike.