The inspiration for this post comes from a reader’s comment about wanting more information about the origin of “candied” yams.
Here is what I learned…
Whether you boil and drizzle with molasses or mash and top with marshmallows, sweet potatoes* have become a staple at Thanksgiving tables.
Did you know that sweet potatoes were cultivated and consumed before the white (Irish) potato?
The earliest cultivation records of the sweet potato date to 750 BCE in Peru, although archeological evidence shows cultivation of the sweet potato might have begun around 2500-1850 BCE. By the time Christopher Columbus arrived in the ‘New World’ in the late 15th century, sweet potatoes were well established as food plants in South and Central America.

Columbus brought sweet potatoes back to Spain, in