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Glazed Sweet Potatoes
Boil six medium sized potatoes in salted water with skins on for ten minutes, remove skins, and cut in halves lengthwise. Arrange in a buttered pan. Make a syrup by boiling for three minutes three-quarters of a cup of sugar and one-third cup of water. Add one and one-half tablespoons butter. Brush potatoes with syrup, and bake until brown, basting with remaining syrup. Serve in hot covered dish.
A straightforward candied sweet potato, written for a cook who knew her stove well enough not to need a temperature. The main gaps are oven heat and baking time.
- Oven temperatureNone is given. A hot-but-not-fierce oven is what the browning wants; something in the region of 375-400F suits, since too slow an oven lets the syrup soak in without setting and too fierce a one scorches the sugar before the potatoes finish.
- Baking timeFigure 30 to 40 minutes, basting every 10 minutes or so, until the syrup has thickened to a sticky glaze and the cut faces are browned at the edges.
- The ten-minute boil is a parboilThe potatoes are meant to come out still firm at the centre. If they are soft enough to yield to a fork they will collapse when you halve them and turn to mush under basting.
- PeelingBoiling with the skins on has a practical advantage: the skin comes away easily once the potatoes are just cool enough to handle, and the flesh stays intact.
- The syrupThree-quarters cup sugar to one-third cup water boiled three minutes gives a thin syrup, well short of a candying density. It will thicken further in the oven, so there is no need to reduce it harder on the stove.
- Sweet potato, not yamAmerican markets often label orange-fleshed sweet potatoes as yams. Either the moist orange type or the drier pale type works here; the pale ones hold their shape better and take longer to brown.
- Pan and bastingUse a shallow buttered baking dish just large enough to hold the halves in one layer, cut side up. Crowded potatoes steam rather than glaze, and a large pan lets the syrup spread thin and burn.
- YieldSix medium potatoes, halved, gives twelve pieces "Serve in hot covered dish" matters more than it sounds: the glaze stiffens and dulls fast as it cools.
Candied and glazed sweet potatoes were long-established American home cooking by the time this book appeared, most strongly associated with the South, where the sweet potato was a staple field crop and a natural partner to cane sugar and molasses.