Are you team sweet potato pie or team pumpkin pie?

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Pastry chef Carla Jones loads a trio of sweet potato pies onto a tray destined for the oven on Nov. 15 at Ol' Henry, a restaurant in Berkeley, Mo. Tristen Rouse/St. Louis Public Radio hide caption

Pastry chef Carla Jones loads a trio of sweet potato pies onto a tray destined for the oven on Nov. 15 at Ol' Henry, a restaurant in Berkeley, Mo.

For many Americans, the Thanksgiving feast just isn't complete until they dig into a slice of pumpkin or sweet potato pie — and for some, there's simply no room for both.

The two desserts have similarities — both are orange, sweet and have a bit of spice — but they have distinct histories that have led to dedicated followings.

At Ol' Henry Restaurant in suburban St. Louis, opinions are strong.

"Sweet potato pie. Definitely," said owner Ada Joyce Taylor.

Her granddaughter, operational manager Audrianna Black, agrees. "I'm looking for that sweetness in a pie," she added.

Taylor started the soul food business almost 10 years ago, naming it after her late husband, Henry Edward Taylor. Today, the walls are lined with signed photos and memorabilia, and it's a well-known destination for those craving sweet potato pie.

"On a normal week, I would say that we go through 15 to 20 sweet potato pies," said chef Tracy Stevenson. "During the holiday, I would say 40 or 50."

Both sweet potato and pumpkin pies are American staples with a starchy custardlike filling. Pumpkin pie tends to be more heavy on spice, while sweet potato pie is typically sweeter and lighter.

But the reasons why people choose one over the other often trace back to where they were raised and their race.

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Chef Jones scoops globs of sweet potato mixture into shells of pie dough at Ol' Henry. Sweet potato pie is a significant touchstone of African American culture, especially around Thanksgiving. Tristen Rouse/St. Louis Public Radio hide caption

Chef Jones scoops globs of sweet potato mixture into shells of pie dough at Ol' Henry. Sweet potato pie is a significant touchstone of African American culture, especially around Thanksgiving.

The origins of these two desserts stretch back to the 15th and 16th centuries, when European settlers brought sweet potatoes and pumpkins back to Europe from the Americas.

With sweet potato pie, settlers may have been trying to replicate the European dish carrot pie, a dessert with layered slices of carrots, according to soul food historian and James Beard Award-winning author Adrian Miller.

"You'll see recipes in the historical record that have sweet potato pie in layered slices," Miller said. "They know that they're sweet and saying, 'Hey, we've got this natural sweet vegetable that's orange, I could use this as a substitute for carrot pie.'"

Miller said carrot pie recipes of the time had similar methods and spicing as those used for sweet potato pie.

As colonization expanded across the Americas, enslaved Africans learned how to cook sweet potatoes. Miller said the potatoes may have resonated among enslaved people because they're somewhat similar to yams, a root vegetable grown in West Africa.

However, he said, the idea of putting sweet potato into pie form came from European culture.

"It's really the expertise of these enslaved cooks, making something unfamiliar to them to please their slaveholders, that eventually gets embraced and adopted," Miller said. "It's the same with things like fried chicken, barbecue and all these other things that were not necessarily part of the West African food heritage."

Since then, sweet potato pie has become a hallmark of Black cuisine and common on dinner tables across the South.

For Miller, sweet potato pie means family and culture.