How sweet it is

It's curious that sweet potatoes are so inextricably tied to the Thanksgiving table, because they certainly weren't stored in the Pilgrims' root cellars; they grow in climates much warmer than ours. This is surprising news for a generation of children raised on the holiday treat of sweet potatoes smothered in brown sugar and golden marshmallows, Thanksgiving's version of campfire s'mores.

The famously sweet side dish made its appearance on American tables in the late 1940s, when war-weary families reached for all kinds of novelty foods, including marshmallows. Corporate home economists invented dishes in which to use these foods, and most were wild concoctions. Any that contained three sweet ingredients -- as in sweet potatoes, brown sugar, and marshmallows -- were instant bestsellers. In the oven, the toppings formed a kind of glaze, so the marketers called the sweet potatoes ``candied.'' Everyone fell for it.

Holiday diners still want their sweet potatoes to live up to the name. Still, there are ways of preparing them so that they're less sugary but not so unfamiliar that your guests will stage a riot. They do need brown sugar, if only for the suggestion of molasses it adds. And butter, of course, because this isn't a day for slimming. A little heavy cream adds a melt-in-your-mouth quality that even a marshmallow can't top. A new tradition? Still not true to that first Thanksgiving feast at Plymouth, but, then again, neither is football.