Instructions: There is an age-old culinary - perhaps agricultural - question that still haunts household cooks today (unless you live in Livingston and already know the answer; Merced County produces 88 percent of the sweet potato crop in California, which ranks third in the United States behind North Carolina and Louisiana).

Anyway, it isnt all that important a question, but it is a nagging one that confuses cooks and creates doubt.

The question is: What the heck is the difference between a sweet potato and a yam? Well, as it turns out, there is a lot.

Sue Johnson-Langdon is the executive director of the North Carolina Sweet Potato Commission, and she says were unlikely to come across any real yams in the grocery stores. What we know as yams are really sweet potatoes, and what we know as sweet potatoes are really sweet potatoes, too.

First, a sweet potato is not a potato at all. Potatoes are truly tubers; sweet potatoes are roots. Sweet potatoes are part of the morning-glory family, though Im not sure that tells us a lot.

To help clear the issue, Johnson-Langdon brought along a real, Caribbean yam; and sure enough, there will be no confusion. The yam, produced primarily in Africa and the Caribbean, is darker on the outside, with a little bit of a stringy bark. Inside, it is pure white and very starchy. Eaten raw, it had the texture of a turnip.

No way were going to get "candied yams" out of that tuber.

The confusion began, apparently, when slaves compared the North American sweet potato with the "nyamis" of their homeland. Nyamis became yams, and the two terms became completely interchangeable.

Its time to stop worrying about it. The American yam is a sweet potato. It is copper-colored with a golden-red flesh that is moist when cooked and has a sweeter flavor than other varieties. Yams are grown primarily in the South.

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