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Mashed Sweet-Potato Caramel
2 cups mashed sweet potato
½ cup maple sirup
Milk
¼ cup butter
Pepper and salt
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 dressed up for the table: mashed sweet potato under a maple-butter glaze, baked until the top browns. The original leaves the oven, the milk and the yield to your judgment.
- The hinge: boil the syrup and butter only brieflyMaple syrup boiled with butter thickens fast and scorches faster. Bring the ½ cup syrup and ¼ cup butter to a simmer just until they emulsify and thicken slightly, a minute or two, then pour it over. Taken further it sets to candy on the potato instead of glazing it.
- Oven temperatureThe book gives none. A moderately hot oven, around 400F, will do; the potatoes are already cooked, so it is a matter of 20 to 25 minutes for the syrup to bubble down and the surface to take colour.
- Milk is unmeasured on purposeHow much depends on whether your potatoes were baked (dry) or boiled (wet). Start with 2 tablespoons per 2 cups of potato and add until it drops from the spoon in a soft mound. A stiff mash will not let the glaze sink in at all.
- "Sirup"Period spelling for syrup. "Thick maple sirup" means real maple, reduced and heavy-bodied, not the thin table blends sold today. Grade A dark or the old "Grade B" has the flavour the recipe is after; pancake syrup made with corn syrup and flavouring will taste flat here.
- CasseroleHere the word means the vessel rather than a type of dish. Any shallow ovenproof dish that can go to the table works, and shallow is better than deep since the caramelized top is the point. A 1-quart gratin dish suits 2 cups of potato.
- SeasoningThe mash is seasoned with pepper and salt before the syrup goes on, so this sits on the savoury side of sweet. Season assertively, tasting as you go, or the finished dish reads as dessert.
- YieldTwo cups of mashed potato serves four as a side. It doubles without trouble, but keep the layer under about an inch and a half deep so the glaze reaches everything.
Butterick published this in the era when American cookery was working out what to do with the sweet potato beyond baking it in the ashes, and when maple syrup was still a regional pantry staple rather than a luxury pour. The marshmallow-topped version that later took over the Thanksgiving table belongs to the 1910s and 1920s and was pushed by the marshmallow trade. The framing is characteristic of the book as a whole: it opens by telling you to use leftovers. Butterick's household titles were sold alongside dress patterns to women running a house on a budget, and the recipes repeatedly turn yesterday's cooked food into something presentable enough to carry to the table in its own dish.