Sweet-Potato Cornbread

When Virginia cooks up sweet potatoes fancy, she puts half of them into pies and the other half into “poon,” or sweet potato bread. Sweet potatoes are as rampant as the kudzu vine all over the South, for the sweet-starchy yellow-orange flesh was a natural staple for breads, cakes, puddings, and pies, not to mention waffles, biscuits, and buns. An early recipe for bread appears in The Carolina Housewife under an Indian name, Espetanga Corn Bread, using