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To Stew Parsnips
Peel the parsnips and slice them; boil in a covered vessel until tender with thin slices of pork; salt and pepper to taste.
A one-line nineteenth-century vegetable dish that relies entirely on salt pork for its flavour. The instructions leave out quantity, liquid and time, so the details below fill the gaps.
- The pork is the seasoning"Thin slices of pork" most likely means salt pork or fat back rather than a fresh cut, though the recipe does not say which. Two or three ounces for a pound of parsnips gives enough salt and fat; taste before adding more salt, since the pork may have done most of the work.
- How much liquidThe original assumes you know. Barely cover the sliced parsnips with water or light stock and keep the lid on; the aim is a small amount of buttery, porky liquor left in the pan, not a soup.
- TimingParsnips sliced about a quarter-inch thick are tender in 15 to 20 minutes. Cooking well past that point risks turning them to mush and leaching out their sweetness.
- The woody coreLarge winter parsnips develop a fibrous core that stays tough no matter how long it cooks. Quarter the thick end lengthways and cut the core out before slicing.
- "Covered vessel"Any heavy saucepan or small Dutch oven with a tight lid. The cover matters because with so little liquid the dish behaves more like a braise than a rolling boil.
- YieldA pound and a half of parsnips serves four as a side dish. A squeeze of lemon or a spoonful of cider vinegar at the end cuts the sweetness, which this recipe otherwise leaves unbalanced.
Parsnips were a winter staple in North American and British kitchens long before the potato displaced them, prized because frost in the ground converts their starch to sugar and makes them sweeter after a cold snap. Cooking them with salt pork is one of the formulas that turns up in rural kitchens: a piece of cured pork from the barrel supplied fat, salt and savour to almost any root vegetable, and served the same function that butter and stock do in later recipes. The terseness here reflects a book written for a cook who already knew how much water to put in a pan.