“In a year of low incomes from cotton, such as 1934, tenants speak of their [winter] store of sweet potatoes in terms which make it clear that they regard this store as life itself. A man’s sweet potatoes are his banked resources, his protection against starvation and destitution until advances begin in the spring.” – Natalie F. Joffe and Tomannie Thompson Walker, quoted in “Soul Food: The Surprising History of an American Cuisine”
Although sweet potato pie is now widely known as the ultimate sweet potato incarnation in soul food, the closely-related pone has had its share of appreciation in the recipe pages of newspapers such as the Afro-American and The New York Amsterdam News.
Many people are aware that sweet potatoes bear a similarity to yams, an unrelated but similar African staple. But according to “Soul Food: The Surprising History of an American Cuisine” by Adrian Miller, the candied/pie/pone treatment would be an atypical treatment for yams:
“Notably absent from West African cooking are past and present recipes or accounts of sweet yam dishes. Overall, nothing like the candied yam or a sweet potato existed in precolonial West African foodways. For West Africans, the idea of sugaring vegetables is nonsensical.”
The sweet treatment of sweet potatoes (which actually originate from Peru) was more influenced by ways that Europeans had been eating carrots, another root crop with similar possibilities. Historic cookbooks contain many recipes for carrot puddings that would be the forebear of sweet potato pudding or pone.
Carrot Pudding,
The London Art of Cookery, 1785
Nonetheless, sweet potatoes became an important staple in the diet of enslaved people. For some newly arrived slaves this may have originally been a preference due to the alternatives being either hard to digest or unpalatable. Miller writes, “Sweet potatoes were an integral part of plantation foodways, and poor whites ate them as well. Southern planters were effusive about the benefits of using the sweet potato crops for slave food. William Summer, a South Carolina planter, wrote in 1845, ‘Such is the partiality of the plantation negroes for potatoes, as an article of food, that as soon as the season for digging arrives, they prefer an allowance of root to any of the cereal grains.’”
This is another example, along with the extensive eating of vegetables such as greens, where the diets of the enslaved may have actually provided better nutrition than the ostentatious diets of the people who enslaved them.
“The fact that the sweet potato got African Americans through hard times enhanced its cultural value, and we see that elevated status in the way sweet potatoes were cooked by African Americans during slavery and after Emancipation,” writes Miller, “A ‘survival food’ is often considered undesirable, something that is only eaten during hard times. For sharecroppers, the opposite was true with sweet potatoes. Farmers spoke of them with almost spiritual reverence.”
So much so, in fact, that there is an exception to the West African indifference to sweet sweet potatoes: Liberia. A recipe search for Liberian Sweet Potato Pone will turn up a dish made from grated potatoes, sweetened with molasses and seasoned with ginger. It seems apparent that this recipe made its way to Liberia with the enslaved people who were freed and resettled there in the mid 1800s. The descendants of this population now make up only about 5% of the population of Liberia, but the country observes Thanksgiving on the first Thursday in November. An adaptation of American Thanksgiving, it is a day to celebrate freedom and independence, give religious thanks, eat roast chicken… and of course sweet potato pone.
Afro-American, 1973
I chose to make one of two Sweet Potato Pone recipes from “300 years of Black Cooking in St. Mary’s County,” contributed by Jane Dotson of “Dotsonville.” Internet searches don’t turn up a Dotsonville but there are many Dotsons living in and around Mechanicsville in St. Mary’s County.
Unlike recipes that use grated raw or cooked sweet potatoes, this one uses mashed potatoes. I lazily chose to roast the potatoes and puree them with an immersion blender. The resulting pone came out creamy and satisfying. Served à la mode with some cardamom ice cream, it was an absolute treat.
Most of us will thankfully not ever know the need to rely on one crop to keep us fed during the winter months. Still, the enduring affinity for sweet potatoes among those who did should be enough to remind us that these nutritious tubers deserve a place on the table throughout the season.
Recipe:
- 1.5-2 lbs sweet potatoes
- 1.75 Cups sugar
- 4 eggs
- 1 pinch of salt
- .5 Teaspoons cinnamon
- .5 Teaspoons vanilla extract
- 4 tb butter
Cook the sweet potatoes until tender. Peel, then beat with an egg beater, adding the other ingredients. (I used roasted potatoes and an immersion blender.) Beat until smooth. Pour into a buttered casserole dish and bake in a 375-400° oven until evenly browned. About 20-25 minutes (5 servings)
Recipe adapted from “300 years of Black Cooking in St. Mary’s County”
This dang potato had a hole that went this deep!
