ARCHIVES: George Washington Carver's Sliced Sweet Potato Pie

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Soooo. In like a lion, eh?
After I sent off the Feb pie cards, I remembered that I had intended to send a “black history month” special last month because I recently discovered a copy of George Washington Carver's 1936 publication called:
“How the farmer can save his sweet potatoes: and ways of preparing them for the table ”
Many folks remember Carver as “that peanut guy”, his legacy is much more profound. Born into slavery in 1864, he was an orphan by the time slavery was abolished.
His former slave owners raised him and encouraged him to go to high school and college. He continued on to grad school. Near the end of his life, Time magazine dubbed him a "Black Leonardo,“ an apt comparison for this renaissance man, an accomplished chemist, botanist,
educator, poet, painter, and one of the earliest advocates of sustainable agriculture. During his 4 decade teaching/researching position at the Tuskegee Institute, he published 44 practical bulletins for southern farmers. Here is a very cool, very unusual sweet potato pie recipe, in Carver's own words:

“ No. 7, SLICED POTATO PIE
Line a deep baking dish with a rich sheet of pastry. Parboil the number of potatoes desired. When two thirds done remove the skins, slice lengthwise, very thin, cover the dish to a depth of 2 inches, sprinkle with ground allspice and a dash of ginger, cloves and nutmeg. To a pie sufficient for six people, scatter around the top in small pieces a lump of butter the size of a hen's egg; add one teacupful of sugar and 1/2 teacupful of molasses. Add 1/2 pint of cream, dust a little flour over the top sparingly; cover with hot water, put on upper crust, crimp edges and bake in a moderate oven until done. Serve hot, with or without sauce.”

check out more sweet potato recipes (including No. 6, PIE (EXTRA FINE) here:
http://plantanswers.tamu.edu/recipes/sweetpotatoes.html