Yam vs. Sweet Potato

Dana and I spent Thanksgiving in Salem, OR with his dad and his new step-mom and step-siblings. We all helped by preparing something for dinner. I was in charge of cranberry sauce. Yum. Amber was in charge of the yams. Her new husband is from back east somewheres where they have down-home-style cooking. And he got to talking about sweet potato pie. Then they had to discuss the difference between a yam and a sweet potato. I think the ultimate solution was that they are the same thing.

So Dana and I (but mostly Dana) did some research on wikipedia to find out the difference between yams and sweet potatoes.

So most Americans are familiar with (regardless of what you call it) the orange fleshed, large and bulbous tuberous object that ends up as part of our Thanksgiving dinner.

This is a sweet potato, although it is only distantly related to potatoes like russets and reds. (Sweet potatoes are in the family Convolulaceae while potatoes are in the Solanaceae or 'Nightshade' family). Sweet potatoes were domesticated in south America at least 5000 years ago and when Columbus showed up, they learned about the plant that the natives called "batata."

Yams, (family: Dioscoreaceae) on the other hand, are originally from Africa and are believed to have been domesticated several thousand years before the sweet potato. The name "yam" comes from Wolof (a sub-Saharan language in the Atlantic branch of the Niger-Congo language family) nyam which means "to taste or sample." I can see early European explorers now, sitting down to eat with the Africans who ate yams as a staple, and the Africans offering them the starchy vegetable and saying "try it, you'll like it." But the explorers thought they were saying "This is a 'yam.' Good for eating!" Yams are large and their skins can be anywhere from dark brown to light pink. Yam skin is thick and difficult to peel before being cooked.

Chances are, unless you know you have eaten a real African yam, you have only had sweet potatoes.

So, Now You Know!

This picture has nothing to do with Thanksgiving dinner: I promise I did not eat macaroni on Thanksgiving. But a recent box we cooked had this noodle that just wasn't going to take it any more.



Take that, cheese sauce mix.