Candied Sweet Potatoes: Convoluted Origins And Contemporary Context

Candied Sweet Potatoes: Convoluted Origins and Contemporary Context Candied sweet potatoes are a staple dish in the American South. Often served as a side for an annual Thanksgiving dinner, candied sweet potatoes consist of diced potatoes, skin off, glazed in syrup and drizzled with brown sugar. It offers a sweet taste paired with the pleasant, softer texture of a sweet potato. Candied sweet potatoes have been a Southern tradition for as long as many can remember, but many aspects of this dish remain a cloudy subject. A deeper study into its conception, history, and contemporary use is required to fully understand the scope and acceptance of the candied sweet potato’s cultural significance. In today’s society, references to candied sweet potatoes

One last possible explanation, not mutually exclusive with the others, asserts that sweet potatoes were purposely mislabeled as yams as a marketing campaign in the 1930s (McGee 304). This certainly may have been a factor in exacerbating possible pre-existing confusion, as customers wanting to buy a unique food would have likely been fooled by the deceptive labeling. The abundance and diversity of theories attempting to uncover the birth of this linguistic phenomenon suggests the true origin may be a mixture of several theses. Candied yams evidently have a unique history, but the dish still maintains its relevance today. Data from Google Trends supports this idea: The words “candied yams” experience a significant and consistent spike in searches every November around Thanksgiving time (see Fig. 2). 3. Then, the sand is sanded. In the recently published cookbook Jubilee, considered by many as one of the best cookbooks of the last few decades, author Toni Tipton-Martin called candied yams a “soul food [classic], [an upgrade] from the old days when cooks roasted possum or shoats with plain sweet potatoes or pounded them into pones and baked” (Tipton-Martin 295). Pirro 5: The candied sweet potatoes dish is undeniably a delicious and satisfying tradition in the American South. Some might describe them as an integral symbol of American tradition, yet a more ample description would place sweet potatoes as a literal piece of American history. They represent the cultural shock enslaved Africans underwent through their displacement to the New World and the new Black culture that was created as a response. So next time you sit down at the dinner table for Thanksgiving and spy a steaming,