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Artichokes, Jerusalem, Fricasseed
Boil some artichokes according to the preceding recipe. Take them out of the water and drain them. Put a breakfast-cupful of milk into a saucepan, flavour it with salt, pepper, and powdered cinnamon, and thicken it with a small piece of butter rolled in flour. Turn the artichokes into this, and let all stew together gently for a few minutes. Time to stew, five or six minutes. Probable cost, 2d. or 3d. per pound. Allow two pounds for a tureen.
A short Victorian side dish that depends entirely on the artichokes being properly cooked before they meet the sauce — the five minutes of stewing is for flavour, not for tenderising.
- The vegetableJerusalem artichokes are sunchokes, the knobbly tubers of a perennial sunflower, unrelated to globe artichokes. Scrub or thinly peel them and drop them into acidulated water as you go, since the cut flesh discolours quickly.
- "The preceding recipe"The boiling step referred to is not reproduced here, but would be simmering the peeled tubers in salted water until a knife passes through easily; on modern testing that is usually 15-20 minutes depending on size. They collapse into mush very suddenly, so start testing early.
- A breakfast-cupfulRoughly half a pint, on the order of 8 to 10 fl oz, or about 250-285 ml. For two pounds of artichokes this makes a loose coating sauce rather than a thick one.
- Butter rolled in flourThis is beurre manié: equal weights of soft butter and plain flour kneaded together, about 15 g of each for this quantity. Whisk it into the hot milk in small pieces and let it cook a minute or two so the flour loses its raw taste.
- The cinnamonNot a misprint. Sweet spice with root vegetables in milk is a genuine nineteenth-century habit; use a small pinch, as powdered cinnamon dominates quickly. Nutmeg or mace gives a similar effect if cinnamon reads oddly to you.
- Stewing timeFive or six minutes is right only because the artichokes are already cooked. Longer and they break down into the sauce, which is not unpleasant but is no longer a fricassee.
- Yield and servingTwo pounds of tubers serves four to six as a vegetable course. "A tureen" here simply means the covered dish the vegetable went to table in, not a soup.
- One warning about the tuberJerusalem artichokes store their carbohydrate as inulin, which is not digested in the small intestine and is notoriously windy. Serve modest portions the first time.
Jerusalem artichokes reached Europe from North America in the early seventeenth century and were briefly fashionable before potatoes displaced them; by the time Cassell's dictionary was compiled they were cheap, common and slightly unglamorous, which is exactly what the "2d. or 3d. per pound" is telling you. The name is a puzzle of long standing: "Jerusalem" is generally traced to a corruption of the Italian girasole, sunflower, though the derivation is traditional rather than documented, and "artichoke" refers only to a supposed similarity of flavour. "Fricasseed" in a Victorian vegetable context means simply finished in a white sauce, borrowing the term from the chicken and rabbit dishes it properly belongs to: French applied to a homely tuber.