Orange and Ginger Sweet Potato Pone (1908)

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Vintage-style illustration of Sweet Potato Pone (AI-generated)
Illustrations are AI-generated in a vintage style. The recipe is shown exactly as it was published in 1908; we have not photographed a test batch.

In 1908 a Philadelphia publisher put out a cookbook whose title made a promise: every recipe inside had been in use for a hundred years and more. One of them came from a Miss Sarah Rutledge of Charleston, and it fits a great deal into a single paragraph: a tuber from the Americas, a name borrowed from cornbread, and a hefty three tablespoons of ginger.

Please note that some of the images in this article were created with the assistance of AI.

From Famous Old Receipts Used a Hundred Years and More in the Kitchens of the North and the South, 1908

The Story Behind This Recipe

A cookbook built from family memory

Jacqueline Harrison Smith wasn’t hunting for new dishes. Her book, Famous Old Receipts Used a Hundred Years and More in the Kitchens of the North and the South, published by The John C. Winston Co., was made of recipes that families had already been cooking for generations. Descendants sent them in, and Smith printed each one under the name of the person it came from.

So this pone arrives with a byline: "Miss Sarah Rutledge, Charleston, S. C." That small credit changes how we read it. This is a dish someone thought worth handing down, and it was already looking back to an older South when it reached print in 1908.

A cornbread name on a sweet potato cake

Before "pone" meant anything sweet, it meant bread. The word probably entered English from Algonquian words such as apan or oppone, meaning baked. A corn pone was a small round loaf, traditionally cooked in a cast-iron skillet. Over time the name stretched to cover sweetened pones, and cooks made sweet potato versions with sugar or molasses and spice. Historical cookbooks hold hundreds of variations. Some were served as a side dish and some as dessert, and with this much sugar, Miss Rutledge’s clearly belongs with the desserts.

The sweet potato itself had come a long way. It was grown in Peru long before Columbus carried it to Spain, and it crossed the Atlantic early enough to become an established crop in Africa. In the American South, enslaved cooks drew on memory and technique to turn sweet potatoes into puddings. Food historian Michael Twitty traces how those puddings and pones eventually became sweet potato pie.

A rich pone for 1908

Look at the shopping list. Three-quarters of a pound of sugar and ten ounces of butter point to a well-supplied household, and the grated orange peel adds a little extra polish. There are no eggs. The pone holds together with grated potato, butter, sugar and milk, baked slowly in a shallow dish, while a generous measure of ginger does most of the seasoning. The dish behind it, though, grew out of a much wider kitchen tradition than any one Charleston household.

Sweet potato puddings had been in American cookbooks long before 1908, and over the generations puddings and pones like this one led to sweet potato pie. The Jim Crow Museum notes that the pie kept its place at the center of Black celebrations, at Sunday dinners and holiday gatherings. Sweet potatoes also became a Thanksgiving staple. Miss Rutledge’s pone belongs to that line, and it comes from before anyone thought to add marshmallows.

1900s

Notes From the Era

When "potato" meant sweet potatoThe recipe just says "grated potato," but the title makes it clear which kind. Europeans used to call the sweet potato simply "the potato." American colonists only began saying "sweet potato" after the 1740s, to tell it apart from the white, or Irish, potato. That’s why old sweet potato recipes can be hard to find.
Not always orangeDon’t assume the potato in an old pone was the deep orange kind sold today. Sweet potatoes have come in white, red, purple and yellow as well as orange.
From hearth to slow ovenThe earliest pones were shaped by hand and baked at the hearth. This recipe asks for "a shallow plate in a slow oven," which means low, gentle heat. It gives no temperature or time, because cooks were expected to know their own oven.
Quarts, pounds and pintsThe recipe measures some things by volume and some by weight: a quart of grated potato, ¾ lb. of sugar, 10 oz. of butter, ½ pint of milk, and three tablespoonfuls of powdered ginger. That’s a lot of ginger by today’s standards, and it’s the main spice here.
Before the marshmallowsMarshmallow-topped sweet potatoes came later. The 1908 pone gets its sweetness from sugar alone and its flavor from ginger and orange peel.
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The recipe · 1908

Sweet Potato Pone

From Famous Old Receipts Used a Hundred Years and More in the Kitchens of the North and the South by Jacqueline Harrison Smith (compiler) (1908). Every word of the recipe below is as printed.

FromMiss Sarah Rutledge, Charleston, S. C.
BakeIn a shallow plate in a slow oven
FlavoringPowdered ginger and the grated peel of an orange

Ingredients

  • One qt. of grated potato
  • ¾ lb. sugar
  • 10 oz. of butter
  • ½ pt. of milk
  • 3 tablespoonsful of powdered ginger
  • the grated peel of an orange

Method

  1. Measure out the ingredients

    One qt. of grated potato, ¾ lb. sugar, 10 oz. of butter, ½ pt. of milk, 3 tablespoonsful of powdered ginger, the grated peel of an orange.

  2. Rub together and bake slowly

    Rub the ingredients well together, and bake in a shallow plate in a slow oven.

Our notes

Reading It Today

Translating the measures. A quart of grated potato is 4 cups. Three-quarters of a pound of sugar is 12 ounces, a little over 1½ cups of granulated sugar. Ten ounces of butter is 2½ sticks, and half a pint of milk is 1 cup. The ginger is ground ginger, and three tablespoons is far more than most modern recipes would use.

What "a slow oven" means. A slow oven means low, gentle heat, usually taken to be roughly 300 to 325°F. The recipe gives no temperature or baking time because cooks were expected to know their own ovens. A "shallow plate" is a shallow baking dish.

What it would be like. Judging from the ingredients, this would be dense and moist rather than light. Grated raw sweet potato baked slowly with plenty of butter and sugar suggests something sticky and fudgy at the center, probably caramelized at the edges, with a strong ginger warmth and a bright note from the orange peel. Without eggs, it would be less custardy than a pie filling.

How it differs from today’s dishes. Modern sweet potato pies and casseroles usually start with cooked, mashed potato, are bound with eggs, and are often spiced with cinnamon or topped with marshmallows. This pone uses raw grated potato and no eggs, and it relies on ginger and orange for flavor. The potato also may not have been the deep orange kind, since sweet potatoes have come in white, red, purple and yellow as well.

Source: Jacqueline Harrison Smith (compiler), Famous Old Receipts Used a Hundred Years and More in the Kitchens of the North and the South (The John C. Winston Co., Philadelphia, 1908). Read the 1908 book at Project Gutenberg.

Sources for the history

The original recipe text is from a work published in 1908 and is in the public domain in the United States. The history, notes and illustrations are Piaci Pizza’s own. Brand names that appear in historic recipes are mentioned as historical fact only. Illustrations are AI-generated in a vintage style. The recipe is shown exactly as it was published in 1908; we have not photographed a test batch.