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Sweet-Potato-art - 9/29/18

"The 'Posh' Sweet Potato - an instant hit with 16th century Europe" by Brigitte Webster.

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This article was added to this set of files, called Stefan's Florilegium, with the permission of the author.

These files are available on the Internet at: http://www.florilegium.org

While the author will likely give permission for this work to be reprinted in SCA type publications, please check with the author first or check for any permissions granted at the end of this file.

Thank you,

Mark S. Harris...AKA:..Stefan li Rous

stefan at florilegium.org

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The 'Posh' Sweet Potato - an instant hit with 16th century Europe

by Brigitte Webste

Sweet Potatoes (Red / Spanish)

The sweet potato (a vine from the morning glory family) was a straight hit with the early European explorers and Columbus took some back to Spain straight away after his landfall in Haiti. From 1493 Spanish ships transported the sweet potato back to Europe in their holds. A variety found in Darien (Panama) was brought to Hispaniola in 1508 and within eight years it reached Spain. King Ferdinand and Queen Isabella may have liked their sweet taste enough to have them planted in their court gardens. Henry VIII was apparently quite fond of their qualities too – a delicious, exotic (supposedly) aphrodisiac! Henry preferred his sweet potatoes in heavily spiced and sugared pies, a fashion that survived long into the 1680s. The sweet potato was also cool enough to deserve a mentioning by Sir John Falstaff in The Merry Wives of Windsor when he is about to bed two women at once and he wishes for "the sky to rain potatoes".

The sweet potato (unlike the Virginian potato) came from the lush Caribbean islands and the Central American isthmus, which helped its high standing in upper class social circles. Polite European 16th century society classified the sweet potato as "rich man's" food being rare and expensive and hard to grow in cooler temperatures. The "chic" sweet potato suited European tastes and John Hawkins (English mariner & slave trader) summed it up as "the most delicate root that may be eaten".

The earliest recipe in England for sweet potato I could find appears in The Good Huswifes Handmaide for the Kitchen, 39 published in 1588 and The Good Housewife's Jewel by Thomas Dawson published in 1596 with the promising title: "To make a tart that is courage to a man or woman!"

Take a good quart of wine, and boyle therin two Burre rootes scraped cleane, two good Quinces, and a Potaton roote well pared and an ounce of Dates and when all these are boyled verie tender, let them be drawne through a strainer wine and al, and then put in the yolks of eight Egs, and the braines of three or foure cocke Sparrowes, and straine them into the other, and a little Rosewater, and seeth them all with Sugar, Synamon and Ginger, and cloves and Mace, and put in a little Sweet Butter, and set it upon a chafing dish of coals betweene two platters, and so let it boyle till it be something big.

A whole year later, the sweet potato gets a mentioning in John Gerard's famous Herbal, where he is holding the sweet potato plant in the portrait of 1597 on the front page of his Herbal. He names the plant as "potatus" and "potatoes" and complains mildly that the plant in his garden failed to produce a flower and did not make it through the winter. Gerard also mentions, that he bought his specimen at the Royal Exchange in London. He also makes a clear distinction between the sweet (Spanish) potato and the Virginian potato and devotes a separate entry for each. Gerard recommends them for the use in the confectionary kitchen and for the roots to be roasted in ashes and then infused in wine or boiled and dressed in oil, vinegar and salt. In his opinion they comfort, nourish and strengthen the body, producing bodily lust and that with greediness!

Joseph Cooper, cook to Charles I, gives a recipe for sweet potatoes in his The Art of cookery Refin'd and Augmented from 1654 : "To stew Spanish potatoes" and there is another recipe using sweet potatoes from William Rabisha in The whole body of Cookery Dissected from 1661 ( 236 ) :

To make potato pye : boyl your Spanish potatoes ( not overmuch ) cut them forth in slices as thick as your thumb, season them with nutmeg, cinnamon, ginger, and sugar; your coffin being ready, put them in, over the bottom, add to them the marrow of about three marrowbones, seasoned as aforesaid, a handful of stoned raisons of the sun, some quartered dates, orangado, cittern, with ringo-roots sliced, put butter over it, and bake them : let their lear be a little vinegar, sack and sugar, beaten up with the yolk of an egg, and a little drawn butter; when your pye is enough, pour it in, shake it together, scrape on sugar, garnish it, and serve it up.

Nowadays what is sometimes being advertised in the supermarkets as "sweet potato" is actually the Yam, an entirely different root, which originates from Africa and not the Americas.

Sources:

· THE POTATO, Larry Zuckerman

· FOOD IN EARLY MODERN ENGLAND, Joan Thirsk

· FOOD IN EARLY MODERN EUROPE, Ken Albla

· THE GENERLL HISTORIE OF PLANTES, John Gerard

· TASTE,THE STORY OF BRITAIN THROUGH ITS COOKING, Kate Colquhoun

· FOOD THE HISTORY OF TASTE, Paul Freedman

· COOKING IN EUROPE 1250-1650, Ken Albala

· GARDENS & GARDENING IN EARLY MODERN ENGLAND, Jill Francis

· NATURE'S ALCHEMIST, Anna Parkinson

· THE GOOD HOUSEWIFE'S JEWEL, Thomas Dawson

· THE WHOLE BODY OF COOKERY DISSECTED, William Rabisha

· COOKING & DINING IN TUDOR & EARLY STUART ENGLAND, Peter Brears

· THE TUDOR KITCHEN, Terry Breverton

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Copyright 2018 by Brigitte Webster. <brigitte.webster at btinternet.com>. Permission is granted for republication in SCA-related publications, provided the author is credited. Addresses change, but a reasonable attempt should be made to ensure that the author is notified of the publication and if possible receives a copy.

If this article is reprinted in a publication, please place a notice in the publication that you found this article in the Florilegium. I would also appreciate an email to myself, so that I can track which articles are being reprinted. Thanks. -Stefan.