Other Uses of The Term yam
Several other unrelated root vegetables are sometimes referred to as "yams", including:
- In the United States, sweet potato (Ipomoea batatas), especially those with orange flesh, are often referred to as "yams." In the United States, firm varieties of sweet potatoes were produced before soft varieties. When soft varieties were first grown commercially, there was a need to differentiate between the two. African slaves had already been calling the soft sweet potatoes "yams" because they resembled the yams in Africa. Thus, soft sweet potatoes were referred to as yams to distinguish them from the firm varieties. While sweet potatoes labeled as "yams" are widely available in supermarkets throughout the United States, markets that serve Asian or Caribbean communities often carry true yams. Today the U.S. Department of Agriculture requires sweet potatoes labeled with the term "yam" to be accompanied by the term "sweet potato."
- Just like commercial yams in the United States, Okinawan purple "yam" is actually a sweet potato.
- In New Zealand "yam" refers to the oca (Oxalis tuberosa),
- The corm of the konjac is often colloquially referred to as a yam, although it is unrelated.
- In Malaysia and Singapore, "yam" is used to refer to taro.
Read more about this topic: Yam (vegetable)
Famous quotes containing the word term:
“We now demand the light artillery of the intellect; we need the curt, the condensed, the pointed, the readily diffused—in place of the verbose, the detailed, the voluminous, the inaccessible. On the other hand, the lightness of the artillery should not degenerate into pop-gunnery—by which term we may designate the character of the greater portion of the newspaper press—their sole legitimate object being the discussion of ephemeral matters in an ephemeral manner.”
—Edgar Allan Poe (1809–1845)