Category: Pastry

America is the short answer. There’s little doubt that pies containing sweet potatoes were being made in the British Isles (and almost certainly other parts of Europe) ever since the explorers first brought the things back from the New World to the Old in the 1500s. Still a true sweet potato pie — which, like pumpkin pie, is actually a cooked custard in crust — didn’t appear until much later, and then in the States.

I’ve received a couple of questions along those lines the last two days. The answer is yes, but only if you’ve grown them yourself. Grocery store sweet potatoes are cured before they get to market. But what is this mysterious “curing”? What do sweet potatoes need to be cured of? Good question. Basically curing is a process by which the potatoes are stored for 10 days or so at a temperature of about 85-90 degrees Fahrenheit. It initiates the process by which the potato’s starches convert to sugars, and gives them their characteristic flavor.

…that I’m having a little trouble posting this week. As Thanksgiving gets closer project deadlines are stacking up a bit. But I shall not fail to complete my sweet potato pie, that I promise you.

We grew a bumper crop of sweet potatoes here at Chez Pastry this year. Those vines pretty much took over our garden at the end of the season, in fact. We dug them, we cured them and now we’re ready to eat them — just in time for Thanksgiving. Let do this thing.

Several good comments and emails the last day or two about génoise and the relative benefits of the classic stuff versus some of the more toothsome alternates. Each side has a point. On the one hand traditional génoise can be quite dry, but then that’s what cake syrup is for. You can add entirely new dimensions of flavor and texture by gettin’ jiggy with the spices, extracts and liquors.

On the other there’s no denying the appeal of a sponge that’s moist and tender from the get-go. Indeed we on this side of the Big Drink are disposed to tender cakes already, so a fluffy sponge is an easy sell here. Maybe it’s the American in me, but I’ll almost always prefer a tender sponge cake over a drier one. Also I confess I can’t stand the texture of a sponge that’s awash in syrup. If you’ve ever been to a wedding and wondered why is this cake WET inside?, you know what I mean.

On a side note, reader Emily asks if I can tell her where eggs Benedict comes from. Emily, it’s commonly thought that this dish, which consists of poached eggs, ham and Hollandaise sauce on an English muffin is named for Benedict Arnold, the turncoat American general who plotted to surrender the fort at West Point to the British during the Revolutionary War. It’s a shame that it isn’t because it would be an extremely clever culinary joke: just like General Arnold eggs Benedict is English underneath.

There are at least two competing theories about the origin of Eggs Benedict. One that it was invented at the legendary Delmonico’s by a Mrs. LeGrand Benedict who placed a creative off-menu order one morning in 1893. The other posits much the same thing, though it was the hung-over Lemuel Benedict at the Waldorf-Astoria in 1894.