Sweet potatoes weren’t invited to 1st Thanksgiving

The first Thanksgiving of the Pilgrims featured plenty of pumpkins, but nary a sweet potato. 

Sweet potatoes typically don’t grow in the Massachusetts environment. The weather’s too cold and brutal. 

Sweet potatoes prefer a warm and humid southern climate, like North Carolina. 

Sweet potatoes have a “sweet southern personality,” too.

When it comes to holiday dining, sweet potatoes and creamy, white mashed potatoes deserve equal billing on the menu. Found in tandem on many American dining room tables, you just have to have scoops of both.

Marshmallows are a ‘Northern experience’

To at least one English food writer – Rosie Spinks of London – America’s “weirdest dish” is a sweet potato casserole with its well-browned, gooey mini-marshmallows packed so tightly together they can’t breathe. 

To Rosie…and this writer…marshmallows are disgusting, whether raw, baked, roasted or camp-fired. 

Rosie Spinks asked: “Is there any dish more reviled…than the sweet potato marshmallow casserole?” 

Hooray for the “Ghostbusters,” who in the 1984 movie took down “Mr. Stay Puft,” the giant, fictional humanoid – made of a ka-zillion marshmallows. 

Stay Puft’s sailor attire is too familiar. With his white sailor cap, traditional blue sailor’s collar and a red neckerchief, he resembled Cracker Jack’s iconic “Sailor Jack” mascot. He was a 5-year-old boy, dressed in a blue sailor suit. 

As background, America’s first marshmallow company of note was Angelus Marshmallows in Chicago, a unit of Rueckheim Brothers & Eckstein, the company that had invented the Cracker Jack treat in 1896. 

The Rueckheim brothers – Frederick and Louis –were German immigrants who had opened a confectionary in 1872 in Chicago. 

They introduced Angelus Marshmallows in 1907; it became the company’s second-most popular product after Cracker Jack. 

The real marsh mallow is a perennial plant that grows best in the damp marshes of the eastern Mediterranean region. Ancient Egyptians discovered that the whole plant could be used medicinally – to cure or relieve sore throats, coughs, toothaches, arthritis and joint pain, insect bites, indigestion, diarrhea, dysentery, stomach pain and assorted skin irritations. 

French candy makers were the first to add sugar, water and gelatin, whipping the marsh mallow mixture into a foamy confection that became known as marshmallow treats. 

Today’s “marshmallows are a processed food that provides little to no health benefits,” wrote Malia Frey, a health coach and weight management specialist. 

“Eating a marshmallow is a quick and easy way to satisfy your sweet tooth that won’t do too much damage to your waistline.” But can you eat just one? 

The Rueckheims promoted their Angelus Marshmallows as being “fluffy, light and pure,” to be used as an alternative for homemade meringue and whipped cream by American homemakers. 

In 1917, the brothers hired Janet McKenzie Hill, founder of the Boston Cooking School Magazine, to develop recipes to encourage home cooks to embrace marshmallows as an everyday ingredient. 

Her favorite was “mashed sweet potatoes baked with a marshmallow topping.” 

Right away, reported Madeline Bilis of Boston magazine, Southerners objected to sweet potatoes with “candy on top, recognizing the sweet-on-sweet combo was too, too much.

Northerners, by contrast, embraced marshmallows as “the latest innovation.” Yuck-o.

Sweet potatoes...cranberries...pecans Yum!