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Parsnip Fritters
Wash and scrub parsnips. Cover with boiling water and cook until tender. Drain, plunge in cold water and rub off skins with the hands. Mash and rub them through a coarse sieve. Season with salt and pepper, moisten with a little cream and butter. Flour the hands and shape mixture in small, flat, oval cakes. Dredge them with flour and sauté a golden brown in melted butter, turning them as griddle cakes. Serve very hot.
A simple vegetable side that depends almost entirely on getting the parsnip purée dry enough to hold a shape. The original gives no quantities, so work by feel.
- Quantity and yieldAbout 2 lb of parsnips gives roughly a dozen small cakes, enough for four as a side. Choose medium roots; very large ones have a woody core that should be cut out before mashing.
- Boiling wholeCooking them unpeeled and skinning them afterwards, as directed, keeps the flesh from waterlogging. Expect 20-30 minutes depending on thickness; a skewer should meet no resistance.
- Dry the puréeThis is the hinge. Parsnips hold a great deal of water, and a wet mash will slump in the pan. After sieving, return the purée to the dry pan over low heat and stir for a few minutes until it stiffens and pulls away from the sides.
- "Moisten with a little cream"Take this literally — a tablespoon or two at most, and only if the purée is stiff. Butter is more useful here than cream, since it enriches without adding water.
- The coarse sieveA ricer or the coarse plate of a food mill does the same job faster. Avoid a food processor, which turns starchy roots gluey.
- Flouring and sautéingDredge just before frying; flour left sitting on the damp cakes goes pasty. Use a heavy pan over medium heat with enough butter to film it well, and turn once, when the underside is set and browned — three to four minutes a side.
- Binding, if neededThe recipe relies on parsnip starch alone. A lightly beaten egg worked into the purée is a period-appropriate insurance policy if the first test cake breaks up.
Parsnips were a winter staple in nineteenth-century American kitchens because they keep well in the ground — a frost converts some of their starch to sugar, which is why they turn up in winter menus rather than summer ones, and why old gardening manuals advise leaving the row in place until needed. Frittering a cooked vegetable purée, shaping it into small cakes and browning it in butter was a common way of making a plain root worth serving at a Sunday table, and the same method appears in period books for salsify, hominy and cold mashed potato. 52 Sunday Dinners belongs to a genre of turn-of-the-century menu books that planned the week's principal meal for the housekeeper, arranging dishes by season.