I Yam What I Yam ... Or Not?

Popeye the Sailor Man swaggers, boasting, “I yam what I yam,” but the literal yam has suffered an identity crisis after having its title usurped by sweet potatoes. I hate upsetting the yam cart, but most of us are unaware that the traditional holiday candied yams are not yams but sweet potatoes; furthermore, sweet potatoes are not potatoes. This hot potato topic makes some of us feel like children told there is no Santa Claus, but we all survived hearing and accepting that truth. What say we do the same with yams and sweet potatoes and untangle the roots and vines of the conundrum?

Most of us have never met a true yam. Archaeological artifacts prove humans cultivated the yam, a cousin of the lily, as a root vegetable in 50,000 BC in its native Africa and Asia. Raised primarily in West Africa, it provides both food and income and is embedded in African culture, which includes joyous new yam crop harvest festivals and tales of an ancient “Kingdom of Yam.” A major crop in Africa, yams come in a variety of colors, shapes, and sizes and fluctuate in length from standard potato size up to almost five feet in shapes from cylindrical with tapering ends like potatoes to hefty rounded chunks weighing up to one hundred and thirty pounds, the record.

[Read this: McIlhenny's World-Record Alligator? The claim of a known spinner-of-yarns remains surprisingly unchallenged.]

Its perennial tuber-bearing vines grow with as much gusto as Jack’s beanstalk if left untended, going rogue to become invasive, but if cultivated and restrained, the yam can and literally does feed a village with edible, starchy, carbohydrate-packed tubers containing sweet, gooey flesh that is mostly white or beige but can be yellow, orange, red, or purple. Dark, hairy, rough skin resembling tree bark covers the flesh, requiring a sturdy knife when peeling. Vegetable peelers cannot do the job. Peeled yams are cooked like potatoes: boiled, baked, mashed, roasted, and fritter fried. Pounded into a powder and mixed with water, they become a paste for thickening dessert puddings and pies and main course stews and soups. An African food staple for eons, there it is called nyami, njam, and djambi, all appropriately meaning “to eat.” Would-be yam chefs can search African and international markets offering yams imported from the Caribbean, where yams were introduced in the 1500s by Portuguese slave traders who crossed the Atlantic from Africa, bringing yams to feed their tragic human cargo. Yams nestled into the steamy climate, sank their roots down deep, and stayed put. 

[You might like: The Catahoula: Exploring the swampy origins of Louisiana's top dog.]

So what about Louisiana yams? Is a yam by any other name a sweet potato or vice versa? No, and never mind that both grow edible tubers from creeping flowering vines. Simply put, it is a family thing. This potato hangs its sweet hat not in the lily family’s closet but in the morning glory’s. As proof, it sprouts purple and pink flowers that open in the morning and close at night. The sweet potato is likewise not a member of the potato family of nightshades but is a distantly related outlier with a separate ancient history dawning 5,000 years ago on the Yucatán Peninsula and Venezuela and even earlier in Peru, as evidenced by an ancient sweet potato “relic” found in a Peruvian cave and carbon dated as 10,000 years old. Incas tamed the wild vine and named its edible tuberous roots batata. They said batata; we say potato ... and hum the old Gershwin song “Let’s Call the Whole Thing Off.”  In the misty past, sweet potatoes sailed to Pacific islands, perhaps with Polynesian explorers. A recent theory says seeds were carried by winds or by birds, not humans, to become a major South Pacific crop by 1200 AD and adopted as a crop in India, China, and Japan. Columbus and fellow explorers introduced the yam to Europeans as New World booty. 

[Next up: Sweet tea wasn't always a given on Southern porches.]

Being seasoned travelers, sweet potatoes’ journey from Central to North America was but a hop and not recorded in history books; however, there is evidence North American natives cultivated them in the South. In 1543 Desoto found them in “Indian gardens” in the future state of Louisiana. The early American colonial version was a pale fleshed, dry northern variety that let settlers sidestep starvation. Both types were classified as potatoes, along with the “Irish” potato brought by early colonists. By 1648, sweet potatoes were cultivated in Virginia, but researcher Jennifer Harbster writes on the Library of Congress blog (blogs.loc.gov), “It wasn’t until the 1740s that the term sweet potato began to be used to distinguish it from the white (Irish) potato.” Diary entries reveal George Washington farmed sweet potatoes before the American Revolution, and sweet potatoes fed his American troops as well as soldiers of both the North and South during the Civil War when food was scarce. Is that really a radish Miss Scarlett brandishes at the end of Gone with the Wind, or is it a sweet potato a.k.a. yam? 

Being seasoned travelers, sweet potatoes’ journey from Central to North America was but a hop and not recorded in history books; however, there is evidence North American natives cultivated them in the South.

Generally accepted by Scarlett’s time, the word yam was in the Southern vernacular. Enslaved Africans’ diets in winter were heavy on sweet potatoes, which they called by the comforting African names from their former lives. Thus the softer, sweeter, deeper colored sweet potatoes of the South that became a touchstone for slaves were dubbed “yams,” an Anglicized abbreviation of the native names; the paler, drier, less sweet potatoes of the North remained sweet potatoes. Perhaps because of their personal importance, George Washington Carver, who was born into slavery, devoted much of his research to sweet potatoes, advocating planting them in soil depleted by cotton cultivation and developing sweet potato products including tapioca, glue for postage stamps, starch, textile dye, ink, and faux rubber.

Thus the softer, sweeter, deeper colored sweet potatoes of the South that became a touchstone for slaves were dubbed “yams,” an Anglicized abbreviation of the native names; the paler, drier, less sweet potatoes of the North remained sweet potatoes.

Historically, regionally and sentimentally, Southern “sweetaters” are yams, but the USDA tends to lean toward literal labels. (Regional grocery stores are more open-minded.) It was not until 1937 that Louisiana growers, whose produce grew sweeter, softer, and more golden with the help of researchers then under Dr. Julian C. Miller at LSU horticulture department, were allowed to market them as such with the USDA’s caveat that “sweet potato” must also appear on labels. Louisiana growers felt the need to differentiate their crop from standard sweet potatoes, particularly the dry, “mealy” potato of northern preference. They still do. With a continuing partnership with LSU, growers have had a steady stream of continually improved varieties, from the Beauregard, Orleans, and Evangeline to a currently unnamed newcomer. 

If we want to call our Louisiana sweet potatoes yams, we can. Growers give us the precedent.  They call a freshly harvested crop “sweet potatoes.” Those that are stored and “cured” for six to eight weeks they call “yams,” which have attained peak flavor and texture and are delivered to markets just before the holidays. I feel no need to gild the lily, no need to candy my yams. A perfectly roasted, steaming hot Louisiana yam/sweet potato (a nod to the USDA) packed with healthy nutrients and vitamins—all its orange fluffy glory crowned with butte—seems to me the pinnacle of goodness and warmth and a perfect representation of the season. May the yams be with you.