Home › Vegetables › Mashed Sweet-Potato Caramel
Mashed Sweet-Potato Caramel
2 cups mashed sweet potato Milk Pepper and salt 1/2 cup maple sirup 1/4 cup butter Left-over sweet potatoes, either baked or boiled, may be used for this dish. Mash potatoes and add sufficient milk or cream to make a smooth, soft paste. Season with pepper and salt. Put in well-greased casserole or baking-dish, suitable for serving at table, and pour in thick maple sirup which has been boiled with butter. Bake until the top begins to caramelize.
A leftovers dish from the era when maple syrup was a pantry staple rather than a luxury. The original gives no oven temperature and no quantity for the milk, so both need judgment.
- Oven temperatureNone is given, and the recipe uses no oven-heat term to convert. A moderate to moderately hot oven (around 375F) should brown the syrup topping before the potato dries out; at 350F expect it to take noticeably longer. Judge by the surface rather than the clock.
- "Sirup"Simply the older American spelling of syrup, standard in much period American printing. Use pure maple syrup; imitation pancake syrup is largely corn syrup with flavouring and will not give the same flavour or finish.
- Boiling syrup with butterThe recipe calls for the syrup to be boiled with the butter, so combine the 1/2 cup syrup and 1/4 cup butter in a small pan and bring to a boil briefly, until slightly thickened. Poured on unboiled it is thinner and more likely to soak in than to set as a glaze.
- Milk, unmeasuredExpect roughly 1/4 to 1/2 cup for 2 cups of potato, added a little at a time. Baked sweet potatoes are drier than boiled and take more. Stop while the paste still holds a shape.
- The casseroleHere the word is used in its modern sense -- a baking dish handsome enough to go to the table. A shallow dish is better than a deep one, since the caramelizing happens on the surface.
- YieldThe recipe gives none; 2 cups of mashed potato would serve about four as a side dish. If doubling, keep the layer shallow so the top browns before the middle overheats.
- Watch the finishThe syrup moves from glossy to caramel to burnt quickly. Start checking well before you expect it to be done and pull it when the surface is bubbling and darkened at the edges, which is the "begins to caramelize" the recipe asks for.
Sweet potatoes glazed with sugar or syrup are an old fixture of American cooking, and maple was a natural sweetener for the dish in regions where it was produced. This version belongs to a familiar strand of period recipe writing built around leftovers -- the recipe itself opens by offering the dish as a use for left-over baked or boiled sweet potatoes, reworked into something presentable enough to carry to the table. The name "caramel" here refers to the browned syrup crust rather than to any confection folded into the potato.