Photograph by Hailey Bollinger
Order candied yams from a soul food menu and there’s a good chance what arrives at the table is made with sweet potatoes. Here’s why: Yams are not a native crop to the United States, but the sweet potato is. The hardy orange potato reached colonial Virginia around 1648, decades after Columbus carried the crop to Europe from Central and South America, where it had been cultivated for centuries. Displacement, adaptation, and culinary ingenuity connect this tuber to Black American foodways. For many enslaved Africans brought to the American South, yams were a staple, particularly in West African diets. True yams, however, did not thrive in American soil, so cooks turned to the sweet potato as the closest substitute. In the process, the crop took on some of the cultural meaning and affection associated with yams. That history helps explain why many Black families still call sweet potatoes “yams,” even though they are different plants entirely. And this crop provided more than food security. As agricultural consultant Jeremy Peaches explains on the Gravy podcast, the sweet potato’s hardiness helped Black farmers sustain a living year-round.
To this day, cooks maximize the culinary uses of this inexpensive root vegetable, transforming it into caramelized pieces baked in brown sugar, butter, and cinnamon until glossy and syrupy; sweet potato cornbread enriched with mashed sweet potato for moisture and gentle sweetness; and, most famously, sweet potato pie, a dessert many soul food lovers prefer over pumpkin pie at any holiday table. If you’ve got a hankering for some sweet decadence in the way of a side dish, Chef Nem’s got it covered. Check out Nay Nay’s at Findlay Market for a traditional pie.
- Chef Nem Kitchen, 3305 Reading Rd., Avondale, (513) 602-8082,
- Nay Nay’s Bread, 1801 Race St., Over-the-Rhine, (513) 720-5843
