Abstract

The sweet potato, (Ipomoea batatas), belonging to the family of Convolvulaceae, is a crop that has established itself very well in our country. In view of the increased interest in this crop as an article of diet, it is proposed in this paper to give simple directions in drying for storage and for the manufacture of flour products, such as biscuits, bread and cake. The sweet potato is a plant of tropical America, its original home probably being the West Indies and Central America. Its cultivation is simple as it comes up in almost every kind of soil, though it makes its best growth on sandy or well drained soils. It is fairly well known that sweet potato forms an exceedingly nutritive food. It can be and is caten raw, fried, roasted or boiled. But its usefulness when the tubers are sliced and dried in the sun and ground into flour and baked into bread, biscuit and cake is not so widely known. The sun dried chips converted into flour can be used in a variety of ways as an article of food. The sweet potato can also be preserved for a long time by a simple process of boiling the tubers, pressing the cooked tubers into cakes and drying in the sun.

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