Americans sure do like to mix sweet and savory foods, and this is never more apparent than during the traditional . Turkey with cranberry sauce, pumpkin pie, savory stuffing with dried fruits, and the classic side dish: sweet potatoes with marshmallows. It just makes you wonder where this brilliant idea came from.
Food historians broadly agree that the first modern mention of the orange spud topped specifically with marshmallows appeared in a 1916 fundraising cookbook called, "At the Sign of the Rolling Pin." Shortly after this, in 1917, the Angelus Marshmallow Company printed a recipe pamphlet that formally paired these two ingredients together once more. As far as the dish becoming a Thanksgiving favorite, this may also come down to the fact that sweet potatoes are a fall crop.
(In fact, there are lots of with them.) And while marshmallows tend to get grouped in with summer treats (think s'mores at summer cookouts), blazing bonfires are very much a staple of the colder months, too. So, it's not surprising really that we'd come to associate these two ingredients with fall and fall celebrations like Thanksgiving.
The idea of putting sweet potatoes and marshmallows together, however, goes back even further than you might think. The history of sweet potatoes and marshmallows Sweet potatoes contain natural sugars that make them noticeably sweeter than white or yellow spuds. However, they've historically been sweetened up even more during cooking.
A 1597 work, titled the "Herball.
