Soul Food Guide: Sweet Potato

Sweet potato pie from Nay Nay s Bread.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 diff