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Pan-Baked Sweet Potatoes
Boil with skins on, then remove the skins; cut the potatoes into slices, crosswise; arrange in a baking dish; sprinkle over about two tablespoonfuls of sugar, and add a half cup of water; put in the oven and bake for twentyseven minutes. A
A plain candied sweet potato, boiled first and finished in the oven. The recipe gives no oven temperature and no butter, both of which are worth addressing.
- Oven temperatureThe original assumes the cook knows her range. A moderate oven, 350-375F, is right here; the sugar and water need to reduce to a glaze without scorching at the edges of the dish.
- That twenty-seven minutesTreat the oddly exact time as roughly half an hour and judge by the syrup: it should be thick and clinging, not watery.
- Boil in the skinsThis is the hinge. Sweet potatoes boiled peeled absorb water and turn slack; the skins keep them dense and slip off easily once they are cool enough to handle. Stop the boiling while a knife still meets slight resistance, since the potatoes cook again in the oven.
- Slice thicknessCrosswise rounds of about half an inch hold their shape. Thinner slices collapse into the syrup during baking.
- Add butterTwo tablespoons of sugar and half a cup of water alone will produce a thin syrup. A tablespoon or two of butter dotted over the top before baking is what many later versions of this dish assume, and it gives the browned, glossy surface the recipe is reaching for.
- Sugar typeGranulated sugar is probably what is meant. Brown sugar or a little maple syrup is a defensible substitution and closer to how the dish is usually eaten now.
- YieldNo quantity of potatoes is given. Around two pounds suits the stated sugar and water and serves four to six alongside a roast.
Sweet potatoes were a staple of American cookery long before this book, grown widely in the South and shipped north in barrels through the autumn and winter, and the sugar-and-water treatment here is a simple forerunner of the candied sweet potatoes that later took on butter, brown sugar, and eventually marshmallows. The two-stage method, boil then bake, was also practical in a coal or wood range, where the boiling could be done on top while the oven came to heat. The stray "A" at the end of the text is likely a printer's catchword or a fragment of the following entry, not part of the recipe.