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Baked Parsnips
1/2 cupful Crisco 5 parsnips Salt and pepper to taste Peel and wash parsnips and cut into two lengthwise, and steam for one hour. Remove from fire, lay in greased baking pan, sprinkle with salt and pepper, spread Crisco over top and bake slowly till tender. Serve hot.
A Crisco-company recipe from the era when hydrogenated shortening was the new thing; the method is sound but the fat and the timings both want adjusting.
- Bake slowly"slow" in books of this period is usually taken as somewhere around 300-325F, though period sources vary. At that heat the halves will take 30-45 minutes to brown after steaming; 375F for 20-25 minutes gives better colour and edges.
- Cut the steaming timeAn hour of steam turns parsnips to mush before they ever see the oven. Ten to fifteen minutes, until a knife meets slight resistance, is enough.
- Half a cupful of CriscoThat is roughly 3 1/2 oz of solid fat for five roots, a legacy of the book being an advertisement for the product. Two to three tablespoons of any neutral fat, butter, or oil coats them adequately.
- Crisco itselfStill sold, but reformulated more than once since 1915 and no longer the same hydrogenated cottonseed product. Butter, duck fat or a neutral oil all work here.
- Woody coresLarge parsnips develop a tough, pithy core. Once halved lengthwise, pare the core out with the tip of a knife before steaming.
- HalvingCut into two lengthwise only works for slim parsnips. Anything thick at the shoulder should be quartered so the pieces cook evenly.
- YieldFive parsnips serves four as a side dish. It is worth seasoning again after baking.
This comes from A Calendar of Dinners, one of the recipe collections Marion Harris Neil wrote for Procter & Gamble to promote Crisco after its 1911 introduction — which explains why half a cupful of shortening turns up on five parsnips. Parsnips themselves were far more central to the American and British table than they are now: they are often said to have served as a staple winter starch before the potato's rise, sweetened by frost in the ground and kept in cellars through spring. Roasting or baking them in fat, as here, plays to the sugars that develop in cold storage, and the dish belongs to a long line of plain vegetable cookery that the shortening manufacturers were keen to attach their product to.