Ann Schuyler on Sweet Potato Recipes
East Point, Florida 1910, Courtesy of the Florida Memory Project
In my research and writing as a food historian, I have used the contributions of food writers in African-American newspapers. Papers like the New York Amsterdam News, Chicago Defender, Pittsburgh Courier, the Afro-American and others. These are food writers whose careers intersected with Jim Crow restrictions that prevented white owned and operated newspapers like The New York Times, Chicago Tribune, and the Atlantic Journal Constitutional from publishing their work. Similar to other contributions of African Americans, their work has not yet received deserving recognition for the brilliance that it is. I decided to share their stories and recipes on my blog and I welcome your comments.
The New York Amsterdam News food writer Ann Schuyler, most likely a southerner, had this to say about the southern cook and sweet potato recipes:
Below the Mason-Dixon line... We don't have just one of two ways of cooking succulent sweet potatoes. We used them candied and delicate soufflés that quiver as they come to the table, combined with apples, and in pies that for sheer flavor leave the pumpkin pie of New Englanders in the background. Sweet potatoes go into biscuits and into--pone but it would be impossible to list the many uses to which we put them. Suffice to say that each is better than the last and it's purely a question of individual taste, which one prefers. To descend from the poetry of flavor to the prose of dollars and cents, you find the sweet potato recommending itself from the point of view of economy, too. Sweet potatoes yield 558 calories per pound against 378 in white potatoes. And, of course, the sugar we use in cooking them is a concentrated fuel food which adds to their food value as well as their goodness. Taken together it would be hard to beat sugar and sweet potatoes as a source of body heat and energy at low cost.
Sweet Potato Custard Pie Recipe
Line a pie tin fide with rich pastry. Fill with the following mixture:
2 cups cooked and mashed sweet potatoes
1 cup condensed milk
2 eggs
1/2 cup sugar
salt
1 teaspoon grated lemon rind
1 tablespoon butter
Directions
Leave out one egg white for meringue. Beat remainder of eggs into the cooked and mashed sweet potatoes. Add the melted butter and the other ingredients. Pour into the pastry and bake in a moderate oven until custard is set. Add 2 tablespoons of sugar to the whites, beaten stiff. Spread over the top of pie and put into a moderate oven until it is a delicate brown. 1/4 cup shredded coconut may be added to the feeling, or spices may be used instead of lemon. Nutmeg and cinnamon are especially fine flavoring for sweet potatoes.
Candied Sweet Potatoes Recipe
Directions
Boiled sweet potatoes
Butter
Sugar
Cinnamon
Directions
Cut boiled sweet potatoes into long slices. Place in an earthen dish; put one-quarter teaspoon butter on each slice; sprinkle well with sugar. Pour in sufficient water to cover the bottom of the dish. Dust lightly with cinnamon. Bake until the sugar and butter have candied and the potatoes are brown.
The New York Amsterdam News, August 13, 1930
