Sweet potatoes are a staple side dish for many American families on Thanksgiving, but do marshmallows belong on them?
Renee Clark, mother of NU student Joe Clark and Thanksgiving chef, says no, but they do always have sweet potatoes for their open house thanksgiving because it’s “tradition.”
Clark even has a friend that puts marshmallows on squash, creating a new twist on the Thanksgiving sweetener.
This recipe of sweetening the dish further with marshmallows dates back to a 1917 booklet published by the Cracker Jack company. While many of the other recipes from that publication have faded out, marshmallows are still being put on sweet potatoes to this day. Among students at Neumann University, however, it is hard to find sweet teeth for root vegetables.
Sharon Black, another cook and mom of NU student Morgan Black, also refuses marshmallows on her family’s sweet potatoes. That is just how she learned to make them. Again, tradition.
This is typical. People make meals, especially holiday meals such as Thanksgiving dinner, the way they learned. Their childhood dishes became the standard.
Despite eating them on chilly Thanksgivings, sweet potatoes are actually a warm-season vegetable that shouldn’t be planted until the danger of frost has passed in the spring.
It is also a new world food. Its origins trace back to Central and South America.
Jahir Alleyne, a junior at NU, shared that his mom never puts marshmallows on their sweet potatoes.
“I never even heard about marshmallows being used until about three years ago,” said Alleyne.
Mathew Fertal, a freshman at NU, shared that while he is “not a sweet potato person,” his friends back home enjoy marshmallows on their holiday plates.
Sweet potatoes are becoming more popular, according to the Agricultural Marketing Resources Center, but it seems that most NU students will be marshmallow-less this Thanksgiving.