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Mashed Parsnips
Wash and cook in boiling water, drain and plunge into cold water, when the skins may be easily rubbed off. Mash and rub through a sieve. Season with salt, pepper, butter and moisten with a little cream or milk. Reheat over hot water and serve.
A straightforward root purée from a March menu, when parsnips are at their sweetest after a winter in the ground. The original assumes you know the quantities, so a few numbers help.
- Quantity and yieldThe original gives no quantities; about 2 lb of parsnips will serve four to six as a side dish.
- Cooking wholeThe skins are slipped after boiling rather than peeled first, which implies the roots go in unpeeled; the text does not say whether they are left whole or cut up. Whole medium parsnips take 20 to 30 minutes at a boil; test with a knife tip at the thick end.
- The woody coreLarge parsnips develop a fibrous central core, and the sieve in this recipe will catch it. If you use a ricer or food mill instead, quarter the roots and cut the core out first.
- Rubbing through a sieveThis is the hinge of the dish. A blender or food processor can turn root purées gluey; a drum sieve, food mill or ricer gives the smooth texture intended.
- Seasoning amountsFor 2 lb of cooked parsnip, start with 2 to 3 tablespoons of butter and 3 to 4 tablespoons of cream, adding more until the purée just holds its shape. Parsnips are sweet and take salt generously.
- Reheat over hot waterA double boiler or a bowl set over simmering water. Parsnip purée scorches quickly over direct heat, and the gentle reheat also holds it without a skin forming — cover it.
Parsnips were a staple starch in Britain and colonial America well before the potato took hold, valued because the roots keep in the ground all winter and turn markedly sweeter after a hard frost converts their starch to sugar. By early spring the stored potatoes and apples are tired, but overwintered parsnips are at their best. American cookbooks of the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries treat them much as this one does — boiled, skinned, and either mashed, fried in cakes, or browned in butter. The sieve step may reflect a period fondness for smooth purées, the same impulse that produced sieved potato, chestnut and pea dishes.