Skip to main content

For Find Out Friday - How Did a Campfire Staple Make It to The Table on Thanksgiving Day?


Last week I am sure most of you were in a turkey food coma. I wasn’t but I was sure was beat from all of the cooking I did leading up to the holiday. Even though I didn’t prepare the entire meal, I cooked for two solid days and that was enough for me. 

Hence there was no new Find Out Friday last week.

But the topic had been picked and I am still going with it. 

With Thanksgiving on the brain I had a lot of cooking minded questions swirling around my mind. But I decided to seek out the history behind a common Thanksgiving side dish; the sweet potato casserole with marshmallow topping. 

I have never made it nor eaten it because I don’t understand the appeal. Sweet potatoes seem sweet enough especially if you sprinkle some cinnamon on them. 

What is the necessity of the marshmallow? 

And more importantly who was the person that started this insanity?

It seems our story begins way back in the fifteenth century. That is about the time Christopher Columbus landed in America and brought sweet potatoes to the New World. Sweet potatoes originate from South America and it was Columbus who brought them to Spain, where their popularity spread across Europe before they arrived in America.

Fast forward four hundred or so years to 1900 when packaged pre-made marshmallow is created. It begins popping up in marketing ads geared towards women who were and are the primary cooks in their families. Prior to the mass supply of marshmallows it was a food that only the rich had access too. But now it was available to the average American.

According to the Library of Congress documents, an article in Saveur Magazine establishes 1917 as the year when the first recipe for sweet potatoes and marshmallows appears in print. Further it is also the year that Angelus Marshmallows (the first company to mass produce the sweet treat) commissioned a booklet that included many ways to incorporate this new candied taste into everyday life. 

Coincidentally, 1917 is also the year that the Cracker Jack Company put out a similar cookbook. However the sweet potato casserole is the only one that seems to have remained popular. 

From then the rest is history. The year 1923 sees college and grad-school women learning about the power of the mighty marshmallows easy way to add a unique flavor to their meals by works like the aptly named “College Woman’s Cookbook”. 

I wonder what the ancient Egyptians, who were the first to harvest the Marsh Mallow Plant as far back as 2000 B.C., would say if they could see it now. 

As for me, I am going to continue to boycott this dish and put my time and energy into making the homemade dishes that my family has come to expect from me each and every holiday season.

For More Information:







Comments

Popular posts from this blog

For Find Out Friday - Why Do Emery Boards Make My Skin Crawl?

You know that sound a fingernail makes when it scratches against a chalkboard?  You know that feeling the sound of that action gives you? I, like most people, hate that sound.  I instantly feel like scrunching my shoulders up to my neck and closing my eyes.  I feel the exact same way when I am using an emery board to file my nails. This annoying sensation has a name: “grima” which is Spanish for disgust or uneasiness. This term basically describes any feeling of being displeased, annoyed, or dissatisfied someone or something.  It is a feeling that psychologists are starting to pay more attention to as it relates to our other emotions.  Emery boards are traditionally made with cardboard that has small grains of sand adhered to them. It is the sandpaper that I believe makes me filled with grima.  According to studies that are being done around the world, it is not just the feeling that we associate with certain things like nails on a chalkboard or by using emery boards

For Find Out Friday - How Do You Milk An Almond?

Despite my affinity for cheese and other dairy products, occasionally (actually a few times a week) I like to go dairy-free.  During those times I rely heavily on my favorite brand of almond milk, as seen in the picture above.  Though I know there is no dairy in this product, I constantly wonder: “how does one milk an almond”? Logically I am aware that no actually “milking” is taking place.  I also know that almond milk can be made at home, although I have zero interest in attempting to make it despite my love of spending time in my kitchen. So, what is the actual process?  How long does it take?  When / where / who was the first to successful develop this product? When talking about this kind of “milk” what we are really talking about is plant juices that resemble and can be used in the same ways as dairy milk. Plant like juice has been described as milk since about 1200 A.D. The first mentions can be found in a Baghdadi cookbook in the thirteenth

For a Doughnut Worthy of Food Network Glory: “Dun-Well Doughnuts”

All because I wanted a Boston creme doughnut. That is how this blog truly began. It was Father’s Day weekend and although I was initially thinking of myself, I knew my father wouldn’t mind having a sweet treat for dessert. Brooklyn is synonymous with great pizza, bread, and of course bagels. But it also has many great bakeries producing some of the most delicious doughnuts you have ever tasted. Just to name a few, there is: Doughnut Plant , Peter Pan Donut & Pastry Shop and Dough .   On the day of my craving, I did what any of us do countless times a day - I opened Google. When I Googled “best Boston creme doughnuts in Brooklyn” Dun-Well Doughnuts appeared high on that list. Intrigued I researched it further and learned that it had won the Canadian  Food Network’s contest called “Donut Showdown” in 2013. That was enough information for me to decide to visit the very next day.  Dun-Well Doughnuts was opened by Dan Dunbar and Christopher Hollowell in December 2011. Despite