Home › Vegetables › Turnips
Turnips
Turnips are a very watery vegetable. They should be put into boiling water and boiled thoroughly until well done, adding a little salt to the water. Then drain off water, mash fine through a colander, season with cream , butter, black pepper, and more salt, if necessary. Keep them very hot until you dish your dinner.
A plain method for mashed turnips that depends almost entirely on getting the water out. The original assumes you know how long to boil and how much cream to add, so the notes below fill in the gaps.
- The hinge: drain hardTurnips hold a great deal of water, and mashing wet turnip gives a soupy purée that no amount of butter will rescue. After draining, return the pieces to the dry hot pan over low heat for a minute or two and let the steam escape before mashing.
- Which turnipThe book does not specify. This is most likely the white or purple-topped turnip rather than rutabaga (called swede in Britain and often sold as "yellow turnip"), though period usage was loose enough that either may be meant. Rutabaga works in the same method but generally needs noticeably longer to cook and mashes to a sweeter, orange purée.
- TimingPeeled and cut into 1 to 1½ inch chunks, turnips take 15 to 25 minutes in boiling salted water. "Well done" here means a knife slides in with no resistance; slightly undercooked turnip will not pass through a colander.
- Salt the water properly"A little salt" understates it. Turnips are watery and bland, and salting the cooking water generously seasons them from the inside rather than leaving all the work to the finish.
- Mashing through a colanderThis is the period equivalent of a food mill or ricer, and it does produce a finer purée than a masher. A food mill or a sieve pressed with a wooden spoon gives the same result; a food processor tends to turn turnip watery and slick.
- Cream and butterFor about 2 lb of turnips, start with 2 to 3 tablespoons of butter and 2 to 3 tablespoons of cream, added warm, and stop when the purée just holds its shape. Cold cream drops the temperature sharply; the original's instruction is simply to keep them very hot until the dinner is dished.
- Keeping it hotA covered bowl set over a pan of barely simmering water will hold mashed turnip for a while, though it may weep if held long. Direct heat on the stove risks scorching the bottom.
- Yield2 lb of turnips, trimmed and peeled, gives four modest servings as a side dish.
Turnips were one of the plainest and cheapest vegetables in the nineteenth-century North American kitchen: they stored for months in a root cellar, tolerated cold ground, and fed both households and livestock, which did their reputation no favours at table. Cookbooks of this period often seem to treat them apologetically, and the terse note that they are "a very watery vegetable" is really an instruction in disguise ile off off water and replace it with fat. The mashing through a colander reflects a kitchen without a food mill. The distinction between turnip and rutabaga was loosely kept in American usage, and remains loose, so recipes of this era calling for turnip may have meant either.