Unlike pumpkin pie, which can be made simply with the help of canned pumpkin puree, sweet potato pie takes work. Much of their food culture was lost, but the sweet potato - and its pie - remained.īaking a sweet potato pie can be an arduous process involving peeling, cutting, boiling and removing those dreaded sweet potato strings. Many dishes and ways of life were left behind for the convenience of the bigger cities, the realities of smaller living spaces and lack of access to plots of land on which to grow food. Soul food historians have written at length about the impact that the Great Migration had on the diets of African-Americans. Before leaving the South, African-Americans had been largely tied to agriculture and farming. During the Great Migration, an estimated 6 million black families relocated to cities such as Los Angeles, Chicago, New York, Detroit and others. As got access to cooking technology and equipment, like ovens, that’s when they started to add pie shells.”Īfter slavery was abolished, African-Americans were subjected to decades of terror that led them to flee many parts of the South over the course of over 50 years. ” asking for dessert were eating roasted sweet potatoes cooked in the embers of a fire or they started eating mashed up sweet potatoes that were spiced. “Before you had sweet potato pie, you had something called sweet potato pound, which is a corruption of the Native American word for a type of baked bread,” said Miller. Furthermore, West Africa isn’t exactly known for its desserts, so where did African-Americans come up with this now-iconic dessert? And there’s good reason why.īut, as anyone who’s ever put a sweet potato in a pastry shell knows, it takes a lot of work to turn this tuber into a pie. Handed out at funerals, baptisms, weddings, barbecues and holiday get-togethers, the sweet potato pie is a dessert you’re sure to find at almost any family function. This dessert is almost sacred within the black community. You see, in my family - much like countless other African-American families across this country - there are really only a few people (maybe two) who are trusted to prepare the sweet potato pie. My aunt would be busily cleaning collard greens and grating cheddar for the macaroni and cheese and my grandmother would be peeling sweet potatoes waiting for a pot of water to boil for her famous sweet potato pie. My mother was usually preparing the turkey, stuffing and ham while my great-grandmother calmly sat snapping peas. Everyone busily worked around the kitchen in harmony. When I close my eyes I’m transported back to that moment: Thanksgiving some unknowable number of years ago when all the matriarchs in my family would gather at my family’s home in preparation of the biggest feast of the year. My earliest memories are of the sound of laughter and the smell of nutmeg.

Sweet potato pie