My Favorite Ladies Auxiliary Sweet Potato Recipe: Basic
WITH THE BEGINNING of the winter holiday juggernaut breathing down my neck, meaning multiple menus to plan, this is the ideal time to revisit favorite recipe sources in search of the perfect (or, sometimes, perfectly frightening?) side dishes from sisters past and present. Whether it’s creamed onions or green-bean casserole that you love (or loathe), our TSP collection of Ladies Auxiliary cookbooks has something for everyone. And let’s be honest––we all need a little humor and perspective in order to survive the next seven weeks.
These wonderful old cookbooks, created by sisterhoods ranging from the Junior League to the Sisters of Pythia, have provided us with the ultimate potato salad, the greatest meatloaf, even multiple interpretations of tuna casserole. I couldn’t wait to see what I’d find there for the traditional Thanksgiving side-dish lineup.
I wasn’t disappointed. For Thanksgiving planning, the books’ offerings boggle the mind, but I had to start somewhere. To me, sweet potatoes or yams are a holiday challenge: Nearly everyone wants them, but coming up with a version everyone wants to eat is a different thing altogether. My go-to recipe is from a sister-friend, or, more precisely, from my sister-friend’s great aunt––how’s that for provenance? It’s slightly hokey and very retro, and also, most important, delicious. But I wondered what cooking sisterhoods around the country and through the eras might offer.
What I discovered in my ever-expanding trove of sisterly cookbooks is that America’s cooks take their sweet potatoes (and yams: the terms are mostly used interchangeably, even though the two vegetables are actually different) seriously. When it comes to sweets, save the perplexing and perennial marshmallow affectation, cooks mostly leave them unmolested, allowing their natural charms (and they are many) to shine through.
Several cookbooks, including the irresistably named Panic in the Pantry, compiled by the Junior Section of the Manor Club in Pelham, New York, offered a variation on this super-bare bones theme: apples and sweet potatoes, sliced, baked together with little or no added flavoring. It strikes me as too minimalist, but then my version includes water chestnuts, so what do I know?
I was astonished that only one cookbook, the tony Main Line Classics, featured what I think of as the classic, slightly nauseating (sorry) sweet-potato casserole topped with mini-marshmallows. Published by the members of the Wayne, Pennsylvania, Junior Saturday Club, the book is relatively recent, 1982, though the club’s history dates back to 1886. (This recipe? I’m guessing it’s more recent.)
The oddest creation I found (for the sweet potato, mind you––just wait to see the travesties unleashed on the poor cranberry in next week’s edition) was the recipe for Sweet Potato Balls from the Junior League of Greensboro, North Carolina’s Out of Our League compendium (1978.) These contained not only marshmallows and crushed corn flakes. Not for me.
The most promising, I thought, was the admirably straightforward Sweet Potato Souffle from Jan Atkins, of Christ Episcopal Church, Farmington, Connecticut. Apparently, they’re not quite as wild in Connecticut as in Pennsylvania, but that suits me just fine––I might even break with my own tradition, and try something new. How about you? Do you have an old standby, or do you experiment on the holiday? Tell us how you’ll be serving sweet potatoes this year; if you use your sister’s recipe, so much the better!
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My mother used to make sweet potato casserole that called for crushed Dole pineapple for the sweetener. It was delicious! My mom loved recipes from the back of Dole pineapple cans. She used to make open-faced grilled cheese sandwiches with pineapple rings and ham on English muffins (the pineapple and muffins being the same size and shape) and I am pretty sure her baked bean recipe came from the back of a pineapple can too. As for the sweet potatoes, in the early days they came from a can, too, but now she roasts real potatoes before turning them into a casserole.
Sweet potatoes have become more of an acquired taste for me, and, sad to admit, were mostly limited to sweet potato fries for many years.
But I like them done pretty simply. I slice them in half and score the exposed flesh about 1/4″ deep in a diagonal criss-cross pattern. Then I put about 1 tbsp of butter in 2-3 chunks on top and finally, top that with a layer of brown sugar and bake at a fairly high temp for about 45 min to an hour until a knife goes through the potato easily. I’m not sure of the exact time or temp so keep an eye on them if anyone tries it so the sugar doesn’t go from caramelized to burned… (I rarely use real recipes, instead relying on tried and true faves or foolishly gambling with some new concoction).
One last caveat: I do put them in some sort of foil or parchment-lined baking dish because the butter and brown sugar really caramelizes in the pan and it’s a b*tch to clean.
While reading, I scrolled down to the Sweet Potato Balls recipe and immediately thought of my 3 years in central North Carolina, only to read that the source for the recipe was indeed in Greensboro. Hilarious. Another Thanksgiving staple from that region – Stuffing Patties. Yes, soggy dressing formed into patties and baked on a cookie sheet. *shudder* Southern cuisine does have its stars, though.
TA DA…!! I am sure this Sweet Potato Souffle is the recipe I have been searching for since enjoying one quite similar at a church dinner several years ago. Normally, I prefer my sweet potatoes to be small, oiled and baked but to use up those monsters from the compost pile this souffle will be what I try when we gather together for Thanksgiving this year. Thanks, Paige…!!
My family asks me to repeat a brandied yam recipe I got as a newlywed (DECADES ago, OK?) that calls for cans of Sugary Sam Yams. With butter, lemon juice, salt and pepper added to the sauce to banish any cloying tendencies, the fact they can be made ahead to perk back up to heat in the crock pot while the oven is otherwise occupied has made them a cook’s favorite as well as a taster’s choice.