A Columnist’s Sweet Potato Pie, Lightened With Beaten Egg Whites
Most sweet potato pie recipes stir everything into one bowl. Laura Morse separated her eggs. The yolks go into the filling with cream and lemon juice, and the whites get beaten stiff and folded in at the end, which gives the pie a lighter set than the dense, custardy version most people grew up on.
It ran in her column, Recipe of the Month, printed on a pink card beside her photograph. It makes one nine-inch pie.
Ingredients
- 3 nice-size sweet potatoes
- 5 tablespoons butter
- 1/4 teaspoon salt
- 1 1/2 cups sugar
- 3 tablespoons lemon juice
- 3 eggs, separated
- 1/4 teaspoon nutmeg or cinnamon
- 1 cup cream
- One 9-inch pastry shell
Makes: one 9-inch pie
Step-by-Step Instructions
- Cook and mash the sweet potatoes in a large mixing bowl.
- Cream the butter until soft, then add the salt and sugar and keep creaming until the sugar is well blended.
- Add the lemon juice, the beaten egg yolks, the nutmeg or cinnamon (put through a sieve), and the cream. Mix thoroughly.
- Beat the egg whites until stiff and fold them into the filling.
- Pour into the nine-inch pastry shell.
- Heat the oven to 425°F and bake the pie for 10 minutes.
- Lower the temperature to 350°F and bake about 50 minutes longer, or until a knife inserted in the center comes out clean.
Pro Tips & Suggestions
- Fold the whites, do not stir them. Everything this recipe does differently lives in that one step.
- The lemon juice is not a typo. Three tablespoons cuts a cup and a half of sugar and keeps the pie from tasting flat.
- Bake the sweet potatoes instead of boiling them when you have the time. Less water means a firmer set and deeper flavor.
- The hot start matters. Ten minutes at 425°F sets the crust before the filling can soak into it.
- Cool it all the way down before slicing. The set finishes as it cools, and a warm pie cuts messy.
About the Creator
The Recipe of the Month column ran under Laura Morse’s name and her photograph, the way the best community newspaper and church bulletin food columns did. Those columns were how recipes actually traveled between Black households for most of the twentieth century, one month and one dish at a time, long before any of it reached a cookbook.
Sweet potato pie itself carries that same line of descent. West African cooks in the American South found the sweet potato where the yam had been, and the pie that came out of that substitution became a fixture of the holiday table and a dish families still measure each other by.
Where to Find This Recipe
This recipe was retyped from the Recipe of the Month card, printed with a portrait of Laura Morse. The publication has not yet been confirmed, and Black Foodie Finder is still tracing it.
The clipping surfaced through the vintage recipe archive kept by @therealblackhistorian.