Home › The Principles of Cookery › Carrots, Mashed
Carrots, Mashed
Scrape off all the skin from some large carrots, and boil them till tender; mash them smoothly, and return them to the saucepan, beat thoroughly for a few minutes, adding a small piece of butter and a little salt and pepper. Two or three spoonfuls of gravy or a cupful of milk may be added, but in either case let the vegetables remain over the fire, stirring them constantly till they are nearly dry. Time, one hour and a half to boil; ten minutes to dry. Sufficient, six large carrots for five persons.
A straightforward vegetable purée, though the timing belongs to an era of older, coarser winter carrots that had spent months in a clamp or sand box.
- The boiling timeAn hour and a half will reduce modern carrots to waterlogged mush. Cut them into even 1-inch pieces and simmer 20-25 minutes, or until a knife slides through without resistance; whole large carrots may need 35-40.
- Scraping the skinScraping with the back of a knife was standard for young carrots; a swivel peeler is faster and wastes no more. Old carrots with a woody core are better quartered lengthwise so the pale central spike can be cut away, as it stays fibrous however long it cooks.
- The step that mattersThe final drying over heat is the whole point. Carrots hold a great deal of water and an undried mash will weep on the plate. Stir constantly over medium heat until the purée pulls away from the pan and holds a furrow.
- Gravy or milk"Gravy" here means meat stock or pan juices, not a thickened sauce. Two or three spoonfuls of stock gives a savoury purée for serving with roast meat; a cupful of milk gives a milder one, but adds liquid that must then be driven off again.
- Getting it smoothA potato masher or ricer gives the texture the book intends. A food processor works but can turn carrot slick and gluey if run too long; pulse rather than blitz.
- SeasoningCarrots take more salt than cooks expect, and the sweetness benefits from a grating of nutmeg or a squeeze of lemon at the end, neither of which the original mentions.
- YieldThe book gives six large carrots for five persons; depending on size that is likely to be somewhere around 2 lb once trimmed.
Mashed carrots sit in the plain-vegetable section of Victorian cookery books alongside mashed turnips and mashed parsnips, all treated by the same method: boil, mash, enrich, dry. The drying instruction recurs often, a corrective to the long boiling that was then standard for root vegetables. Cassell's, published in cheap parts for middle-class households in the 1870s, was aimed at cooks working with what the greengrocer had; large storage carrots were a winter staple, which explains the generous boiling time. The option of gravy rather than milk also tells you where the dish belonged on the table: beside a joint, catching the juices.