The Great American Pie Tour

As Easy as Eating Pie

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As presented in Grafton's Valley Messenger. Read Latest Edition

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Sweet Potato Pie And the Food Timeline.

Food is a fascinating subject! Wehave so often been astonished at the depth of connection between culture and food and food and culture. Trav- eled and traded, the history of food is our history.

We’ve just discovered a wonderful resource called, “The Food Timeline.” As the name suggests, it is a humon- gous database of all food starting with water and ice, and ending with Twecipies, tweeted recipes from Twit- ter. You can find any food, with links to more detailed information. It is a massive work and beautifully written. For instance, when you search for ‘sweet potatoes,’ you will find yourself on the 17th century timeline. When you click on the link, you’ll see the inexorable confusion between yams and sweet potatoes explained, and oh, so much more!

Much like the banana, sweet pota- toes take a circuitous journey around the whole of the world before lighting in North America. Sweet Potato (ipomoea batatas) , a member of the morning glory family, originated in Peru 8000BC. Cultivated as far North as Mexico well before the Incan civilisation, the sweet potato was probably transported to Easter Island and then Hawaii in the 13th century AD, and then on to New Zea- land in the next century. Members of Columbus’s mission to Haiti in 1492 were the first Europeans to sample sweet potatoes. The Europeans brought them to West Africa. West Africans had long been cook- ing with yams and thought the two roots so similar they would often interchange the names. Hence, the beginning of the confusion between the two. It was people who were taken into slavery from West Africa that brought sweet potatoes to North America.

Sweet Potato Pie is a Southern States delicacy. The earliest printed recipe for Sweet Potato Pie in America appeared in the Kentucky Housewife, by Lettice Bryan, 1839.

There are many recipes for Sweet Potato Pie we could choose from. Since it is often considered a holiday treat served mostly at Thanksgiving (24 November) and Christmas, we will consider the spiced ones rather than the sweet ones as we believe it to be traditional as well to add marsh- mallows to the top! Don’t even get us started about the fascinating history of Marshmallows! We’re very excited about this one!

Find us on Facebook @coldbrewca- feaustralia for our progress, “tips and secrets” and other updates in making sweet potato pie. Search #greata- mericanpietour to find our past posts and pies on the Great American Pie Tour and look for the final Sweet Potato Pie recipe in the next issue’s printing of the Valley Messenger. We look forward to seeing you!

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Sweet Potato Pie Recipe

It is said, the first time you make a recipe it’s the recipe of the person who gave it to you. The next time you make it, it’s yours! Our core recipe for sweet potato pie came from Martha Stewart’s daughter Alexis. A few tweaks later and it was ours! As to the marshmallows, use them—don’t use them. We put them on our pie after it was cooled. We then put the pie under the grill for a few minutes to brown the marshmallows, because it’s traditional. But this pie is great without.

Sweet Potato Pie

Use any store bought pie crust or our favourite Pate Brisee for this simple pie.

Filling

600 g around 4 medium sweet potatoes
3 large eggs, lightly beaten
1/3 cup 73g sugar
3/4 teaspoon ground cinnamon
1/2 teaspoon ground allspice
1/8 teaspoon freshly grated nutmeg
1/4 teaspoon salt
1 1/2 cups half-and- half
4 tablespoons 53g unsalted butter, melted

Method:

Add all ingredients to the bowl. Mix and pour into unbaked pie crust. Bake 200ºC for 60 minutes or until knife inserted and pushed a few millimetres away separates clean. Serve at room temperature and ENJOY!

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