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Baked Sweet Potatoes
Select six good-sized, sound sweet potatoes. Slightly trim off both ends, wipe and place them on a tin plate, baking in the hot oven for forty-five minutes and turning them over every ten minutes. Remove and serve on a hot dish enveloped in a folded napkin.
A straightforward baked potato, with one detail worth keeping: trimming the ends lets steam escape so the potatoes do not burst.
- "Hot oven"Period usage generally corresponds to something in the region of 400-450F. At the lower end of that range, medium sweet potatoes take roughly 45-60 minutes; a thin skewer should slide in with no resistance.
- Turning every ten minutesNecessary on a tin plate in a wood- or coal-fired oven with uneven heat. In a modern oven, one turn at the halfway point is enough.
- The tin plateUse a rimmed sheet pan, and line it. Sweet potatoes leak sugary syrup that carbonises and is unpleasant to scrub off.
- Pierce or trimTrimming both ends may serve much the same venting purpose as pricking with a fork, though the recipe does not say so. Doing one or the other reduces the chance of the skin splitting as the interior steams.
- Size matters more than timeThe recipe specifies only "good-sized," with no weight given. Choose potatoes of similar thickness so they finish together; a fat one alongside a slim one guarantees one is underdone.
- The folded napkinNot decoration. A linen napkin wrapped around the potatoes absorbs escaping steam and keeps them hot without going soggy at the table.
- YieldSix potatoes, one per person as a side dish.
Sweet potatoes are native to Central and South America and were long established in the American South by the time this book appeared; baking them whole in the ashes or the oven is among the least interfering ways to cook them, and it concentrates their sugars as the starches convert during the long heat. The instruction to serve them wrapped in a folded napkin reflects the service conventions of a period when even a plain vegetable arrived at table with some formality. Books like this one gathered simple regional dishes alongside elaborate continental ones, presenting American staples as one cuisine among many for a readership newly interested in the idea of international cooking.