Buzz
The modern Thanksgiving meal has evolved significantly from its 1621 origins. Contemporary menus often feature 20th-century processed foods, such as canned cranberry sauce, pre-packaged stuffing, and condensed cream of mushroom soup (used in the ever-popular green bean casserole). Among these, the most puzzling addition is the sweet potato casserole crowned with melted mini marshmallows. Contrary to family lore, this overly sweet dish wasn’t a cherished heirloom recipe but rather a marketing ploy by the marshmallow industry to popularize their product.
While sweet potatoes are naturally sugary, history shows they’ve long been prepared as a dessert. As noted by The Kitchn, Amelia Simmons’s 1796 cookbook American Cookery includes a “potato pudding” recipe combining boiled potatoes with a generous amount of sugar. Similarly, the 1896 Boston Cooking School Cookbook introduced a recipe for glazed or candied sweet potatoes.
By the early 1900s, sweetening sweet potatoes was a common practice, but pairing them with actual candy was still unconventional. This shifted in 1917 when Angelus Marshmallow devised an innovative marketing strategy. Before this, marshmallows were mainly used in medicine or as high-end sweets. Angelus revolutionized the industry by mass-producing the soft, fluffy marshmallows we recognize today.
To popularize their new product, Angelus’s marketing team enlisted Janet McKenzie Hill, the founder of the Boston Cooking School Magazine. She was tasked with creating a recipe booklet that showcased marshmallows as the main ingredient, demonstrating to American households how to incorporate the product into their daily meals. Among these recipes, the most impactful was the one for “mashed sweet potatoes topped with marshmallows.” As reported by Saveur, this marked the first documented appearance of a marshmallow-topped sweet potato recipe in print.
Though sweet potato casserole originated from a corporate marketing strategy rather than a family recipe, it doesn’t diminish its authenticity. For over a hundred years, home cooks have adapted and personalized the dish. Interestingly, the Angelus recipe predates the Girl Scouts’ s’mores recipe by almost ten years, making the casserole the more historically established marshmallow-based dish. Just be cautious—pairing it with a few slices of pumpkin pie on Thanksgiving might send you into a sugar overload.
