Sinking your teeth into a buttery, old-fashioned sweet potato biscuit is a legendary experience quickly fading into North Carolina culinary obscurity despite an almost unbelievable pedigree.
Sweet potato biscuits were reportedly served at the opening of the First Continental Congress in 1774. One hundred and forty-eight years later, the great African American botanist George Washington Carver championed this Southern delight as a crucial way farmers could diversify their crop usage.
That significant history is now mostly memorialized in memory. East Carolina University alumni long past their college days join locals in pining for the version once served at the late Venter’s Grill in Greenville. Shuttered Sweet Potatoes Restaurant in Winston-Salem was celebrated for a recipe that today endures only in cofounder Stephanie Tyson’s “Well Shut My Mouth” cookbook.
With North Carolina foodways vanishing as quickly as residential sprawl eats up the state’s farmland, sweet potato biscuits are becoming rare finds on menus and in the repertoire of home cooks. But in Camden, it stands as a delicious reminder of why such a simple thing is worth saving.
Beyond nostalgia
On a foggy morning in the tiny, coastal community, dogs bound excitedly through endless farm fields. Ruritan Club signs announcing a Brunswick stew sale dominate political H-stakes stuck along the roadside…