Virginia Sweet Potato and Bourbon Soup

First, to clear up one grave misconception: genuine yams are not sweet potatoes, despite their resemblance to them in shape and flavor. The two are different plant species altogether—the yam a tuber found mainly in South America and Africa, the sweet potato native to the New World, especially the American South. Most likely, the confusion derives from African slaves having called the sweet potato either njam or djambi. Long before that, sweet potatoes were being cultiva