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Sweet Potato Pie
Boil, skin and mash three good-sized sweets. There should be one pint of it, to which add one pint of milk, three eggs beaten light without separating, half cup of sugar, a teaspoonful of vanilla, or half teaspoonful of cinnamon and a level teaspoonful of ginger. Mix, pour into deep pie-tins lined with light paste and bake in a moderate oven a half hour.
A straightforward custard pie built on volume rather than weight, which makes it easy to scale once you know what a pint of mashed sweet potato looks like. The only real judgment call is the bake.
- A pint of mashTwo cups of mashed cooked flesh, measured after cooking and skinning. Three medium sweet potatoes of about 8 oz each will get you there with a little to spare.
- "Sweets"Ordinary orange-fleshed sweet potatoes, often sold as yams in American markets. True yams are a different, starchier tuber and will not give the same smooth custard.
- Moderate ovenRoughly 350 to 375F. At half an hour a deep pie will likely still be loose in the middle; bake until the edge is set and the centre wobbles as a single mass, usually 40 to 50 minutes.
- Light pasteA plain flaky short pastry, not puff. Because the filling is wet, blind bake the shell 12 to 15 minutes before filling or the bottom will stay pale and damp.
- Eggs unseparatedThe whites are not whipped separately here; the eggs go in whole, beaten light, and the mixture is then stirred into the purée, so the custard sets evenly rather than rising like a souffle.
- Roast rather than boilThe original boils the potatoes, which waterlogs them. Baking or roasting them whole concentrates the sugars and gives a firmer set, though you may need a splash more milk.
- SpicingAs written the pie is lightly spiced by modern standards: vanilla or cinnamon, plus a teaspoon of ginger. Nutmeg and a pinch of salt are period-appropriate additions if you want more depth.
- YieldRoughly five cups of filling; the recipe says 'pie-tins' in the plural, so figure two pies, or one deep-dish if you prefer a thicker slice. Cool at least two hours before cutting; the custard firms considerably as it drops to room temperature.
Sweet potato pie belongs to the American South, where the sweet potato was cheap, storable through winter and abundant enough to stand in for the pumpkin and squash pies of the North. The two are near-identical in construction -- a spiced, sweetened puree bound with eggs and milk in a pastry shell -- and both are commonly linked to the older English tradition of custard and root-vegetable "puddings" baked in a crust. The measurement by pint rather than by pound is also of its time.