Gratin with Sweet Potatoes and Coconut

The sweet potato (Ipomoea batatas) is not a member of the Solanum family, therefore not a potato at all, although after its introduction into Europe via Spain in the early sixteenth century, there was confusion about the two tubers. The sweet potato, however, can be cooked in most of the same ways that apply to our potato. The botanist George Washington Carver is said to have invented 500 uses for the sweet potato. Here the two are cooked together.