We actually have a book for recipes (press the Up button to see a recipe for Pork Delay, for example). Some are serious, of course, but you never know…

No authoritarians were tortured in the writing of this post.

but somebody over at the Crack Den won’t part with the precise marinade used in the making of the chips, so I can’t post the recipe yet. And the Placenta Helper products are said to still be under trademark so we don’t want to go there either.

However Sarah’s recipe, in a slight variation, is of considerable antiquity. Compare to this one, from The Kentucky Housewife, Lettice Bryan, 1839:

POTATO CAKES

Having boiled some fine sweet potatoes done, peel them, mash them fine, pass the pulp through a sieve, and mix one pint of it with a pint of flour. Add two beaten eggs, two spoonfuls of butter, half a tea-spoonful of salt, and enough sweet milk to make it a thick batter. Beat it very well, drop it on buttered tin sheets, allowing a large spoonful to each, and bake them in a brisk oven till a light brown. Lay on the top of each a small lump of firm butter, and send them to table warm.

I have no doubt similar items were around for centuries earlier than that, from the time potatoes (either white or sweet) were first brought from Peru to Europe. The challenge from that period is to find written annotation of such, and only the likes of Karen Hess knows where such resources are to be found, alas.

Civil War period is relatively easy. Publishing was in full flourish and writing was one of the few ways a woman without male support could earn a respectable living. By mid-century she could even put her own name on it without causing too much in the way of scandal, as opposed to earlier days when they are attributed to “A Lady of Baltimore” or the like. Hard to collect royalty checks with an arrangement like that….

If you add sauteed onions to the mix and coat each cake lightly in cornmeal before frying, you’ll have something very tasty indeed….