Sweet Potato Fries
We do not honor the creators of iconic foods sufficiently in the United States. Part of the problem is that it is difficult to ascertain who, exactly, invented something. We don’t know who first made iced tea a metropolitan drink in the late antebellum period, or who concocted gumbo or shrimp and grits. So when we do happen to know the name of a creator and neglect to duly honor the person, it is a double shame. So attention Raleigh, NC. Commission a sculptor to start shaping a full figure simulacrum of Dr. Maurice W. Hoover. In the late 1970s that visionary food scientist invented the sweet potato fry.
N.C. State Library Dr Maurice Hoover
Hoover knew that the nutritionally value of the sweet potato was sufficiently higher than that of a regular potato. More vitamin A and more vitamin C. A plenitude of beta carotene. If the costs could be kept equivalent, the sweet potato fry would have more nutritional value and novelty value. Hoover consorted with Ernest Parker of Lewisville NC to open a manufacturing plant, using sweet potatoes grown in Bladen County. It proved to be the right thought in the right place at the right time. North Carolina led the nation in sweet potato production and Dr. Hoover saw the way to carve a new stream of profit.
When the first fries went on sale, consumer feedback indicated that the fries were too soft. Customers expected the crispness of the classic French fry and weren’t getting it. So scientists in N. C. State, Clemson, and GA State began furiously testing the various cultivars of sweet potato to determine which possessed the most gumption after a scalding in deep fat. (The Hannah is ideal for frying, if you can get it. But consumers favor varieties with a deeper orange color.) It took until 1987 before the public began embracing the sweet potato fry. There were places that pioneered its appearance on menus of public eateries: Daytona FL, Myrtle Beach SC. But the thing that tipped the restaurant industry in favor of the sweet potato fry was research by NC State published in 1987 that neither flavor nor nutrition degraded in the fries after a year of being frozen It is a sad comment on the fast food industry that this was the deal maker. The USDA jumped on this report and began promoting the fries nationally. By 1990 sweet potato fries, cooked in peanut oil, had become a restaurant fixture.
Since that time the most consequential tweak in its presentation is goosing the sweetness by dusting the fries in sugar and cinnamon.
Sources: “Sweet Potato Fries to Go on Sale Soon,” Greensboro Daily News (January 15, 1979), 19. “Getting at Energy in Sweet Potatoes,” Augusta Chronicle (October 19, 1981), 12. “Promoting an Underused Agricultural Item: The Yam,” New Orleans Times Picayune (June 18, 1988), 17.
Good stuff sir! I have been serving sweet potato fries for the last 17 years at the Roadhouse albeit ours are not frozen and based a little more on the gullah tradition of Sea Island.