What’s your favorite holiday dish? Mine is a Thanksgiving classic: the sweet potato casserole, topped with a generous heap of marshmallows. It’s a divisive food—you either love it or think it’s sickly sweet overkill. Very American, right?

Actually, the dish has surprisingly international origins. It’s a product of the business strategy of two German brothers who brought mass-produced marshmallows to the United States in the early 20th century. The Rueckheims—famed for Cracker Jack—enlisted the help of a prominent cookbook author to design recipes that used marshmallows, and so the dish was born.

What’s your........

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