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Creamed Turnips
Wash turnips, and cut in 1/2 inch cubes. Cook 3 cups in boiling salted water 20 minutes, or until soft. Drain, and serve with the following sauce: 2 tablespoons Crisco, 2 tablespoons flour, 1 cup milk, 1/4 teaspoon salt, and pepper to taste. Put Crisco in saucepan, stir until melted and bubbling; add flour mixed with seasonings, and stir until thoroughly blended. Pour on gradually the milk, adding about 1/3 at a time, stirring until well mixed, then beating until smooth and glossy.
A plain white sauce over boiled turnips, written when Crisco was the newest thing in the pantry. Two details are worth adjusting: the cooking time and the fat.
- CriscoAn all-vegetable hydrogenated shortening, launched in 1911 and heavily promoted in books like this one. Butter makes a better sauce here and can be swapped tablespoon for tablespoon; modern Crisco has been reformulated and contains far less trans fat than the original.
- Twenty minutes is longHalf-inch cubes of turnip are tender in about 10-12 minutes in boiling water. Twenty minutes gives you something closer to mash, and waterlogged besides. Start testing at ten.
- Peel firstThe recipe says only to wash. Turnip skin can be tough and slightly bitter, especially on larger roots; peel generously before cubing.
- Drain thoroughlyTurnips hold a great deal of water. Return the drained cubes to the dry hot pan for a minute over low heat to steam off surface moisture, or the sauce will thin out on the plate.
- The sauce ratioTwo tablespoons fat, two tablespoons flour, one cup milk is a standard medium white sauce. Cook the flour and fat together a full minute before adding milk so it does not taste raw, and add the milk warm if you want it lump-free with less beating.
- YieldThree cups of raw cubes serves four as a side dish. The cup of sauce is roughly right for that quantity.
- SeasoningA quarter teaspoon of salt in the sauce is modest, and the turnips themselves are boiled in salted water. Taste at the end. A grating of nutmeg or a little dry mustard in the flour lifts a sauce this plain.
A Calendar of Dinners was written by Marion Harris Neil and published by Procter & Gamble to promote Crisco, which the company introduced in 1911 as a substitute for both lard and butter; the recipes lean heavily on it, which explains why a simple white sauce here begins with shortening rather than the butter a cook of the period would otherwise have reached for. Turnips themselves were an old, cheap, dependable winter vegetable in American and British kitchens, stored in cellars through the cold months and treated more as ballast than as a delicacy — creaming them in a milk sauce was one familiar way of making a homely root palatable at a family table.