Why are Sweet Potatoes Served at Thanksgiving?

Video Transcript

"Hi! I'm Jennifer Cail and on behalf of Expert Village, I'm going to show you how to make sweet potatoes. How did sweet potatoes, and in particular the marshmallow sweet potato casserole, become a ubiquitous part of Thanksgiving? For a number of reasons. First of all, since the potatoes are native plant to the United States as well as the rest of the Americas, they fell in naturally with the Thanksgiving harvest celebrations. Particularly, in the south where they're most common. The candied yams in particular, became very popular during the revolutionary war when kernel Wallace would stop at one end and they always had candied sweet potatoes at that end. How did marshmallows become apart of the candied sweet potatoes? Well, during the 20's and 30's, the Jell-O Corporation was publishing tons of recipes using Jell-O to promote their products. Tons of those recipes had marshmallows in them as well. Marshmallows became a big part of the American staple for making desserts and being used as a topping. The candied sweet potatoes with the marshmallow on top probably became popular during the 30's and 40's."