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Artichokes, Jerusalem, in White Sauce
Wash and pare the artichokes, and throw each root as it is pared into cold water, to preserve the colour. Cut a little piece off one end, so that each one will stand, and taper the other end. Boil them in milk and water, and when tender arrange them in a dish with the points uppermost, and pour over them a good white sauce. Time to boil, about twenty minutes. Probable cost, 2d. or 3d. per pound. Allow two pounds for a tureen.
A plain Victorian vegetable dish that hinges on two things: keeping the pared tubers pale, and not overcooking them into mush. Both are easily managed.
- The cold water is not optionalCut Jerusalem artichoke flesh browns within a minute or two of contact with air. The original says cold water; a squeeze of lemon or a spoonful of vinegar in it works better still, and the milk in the cooking liquid does the rest of the whitening.
- Milk and waterThe recipe gives no proportions: enough milk and water to cover is all that is implied, and cooks commonly salted it. Milk keeps the vegetable white and slightly sweetens it. Use a non-reactive pan and watch it, as milk catches on the bottom.
- Twenty minutes is the outside figureModern tubers, trimmed to a uniform size, are usually tender at 12 to 15 minutes. Test with a skewer early; past the point of tenderness they collapse and will not stand up in the dish as the recipe intends.
- Shaping themTrimming one end flat and tapering the other is purely for presentation — they are meant to be stood on end like little pears. On knobbly modern tubers this wastes a good deal, so choose the smoothest ones and reserve the trimmings for soup.
- "A good white sauce"A flour-and-butter white sauce, thinned with milk (or some of the strained cooking liquid) and simmered until it coats a spoon. Proportions are left to the cook here. Season with salt, white pepper and a scrape of nutmeg.
- Cost and "a tureen"The 2d. or 3d. per pound is Victorian pricing and tells you only that these were cheap. Two pounds of tubers would serve roughly four as a vegetable course; the "tureen" here is the covered serving dish the vegetable came to table in, though such dishes are more often associated with soup.
- A digestive noteJerusalem artichokes store their carbohydrate as inulin, which many people do not digest comfortably. Serve modest portions the first time, and expect the effect regardless of how long they are boiled.
Jerusalem artichokes are the tubers of Helianthus tuberosus, a North American sunflower relative, and have nothing to do with either Jerusalem or globe artichokes — the name is generally traced to a corruption of the Italian girasole, sunflower, with "artichoke" attached for the faint resemblance in flavour. They reached Europe in the early seventeenth century and were briefly fashionable before settling into the role they occupy here: a cheap winter root, priced by the pound alongside potatoes and turnips. The treatment is the standard Victorian answer to any pale boiled vegetable — cook it in milk and water to keep it white, then mask it in béchamel — and the same three sentences would serve for salsify, seakale or celeriac.