In this paean to the brightly colored root, April McGreger tells the multifaceted history of a fundamental southern food, praising its rich and diverse savory-to-sweet flavor profile, botanical varieties, and shockingly high nutritional value. Along with instructions for selection and storage, McGreger shares the fifty best sweet potato recipes in the world. Embracing but going well beyond the classics — from Sweet Potato Pone and Candied Sweet Potatoes to Sweet Potato Chiles Rellenos and Sweet Potato-Ginger Crèmes Caramels — McGreger’s creations will delight and satisfy with their deliciousness and versatility.

McGreger relates a tale from a traveler in 1940s Mississippi who said he ate “sweet potatoes with wild turkeys and various other meats, had a potato pie for dessert and roasted potatoes offered to him as a side dish, drank sweet potato coffee and sweet potato home brew, had his horse fed on sweet potatoes and sweet potato vines, and when he retired he slept on a mattress stuffed with sweet potato vines and dreamed he was a sweet potato someone was digging up.” The sweet potato is no less important to McGreger, the daughter and sister of Mississippi sweet potato farmers.