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Carrots, to Dress in the German Way
Melt two ounces of butter in a saucepan. Lay in it six carrots cut into thin slices, with a little salt, pepper, grated nutmeg, and a tea-spoonful of finely-minced onion. Let them remain until tender, adding every now and then as it is required a little water or stock. Thicken the sauce with a little flour, and about a quarter of an hour before serving, add one table-spoonful of finely-minced parsley. Time, one hour. Sufficient for five or six persons.
A gentle braise in butter, closer to a stew than a boil, with the liquid added by degrees rather than all at once. Nothing here is obscure, but the timing and the thickening both want interpreting.
- The hinge: add liquid a little at a timeThe carrots should stay in a shallow film of buttery liquid, not swim in it. Adding stock in small splashes as the pan dries keeps the sugars concentrating rather than leaching out, which is the whole point of the method.
- One hour is longThinly sliced carrots are tender in 20 to 30 minutes over low heat. The longer time may reflect larger, coarser winter carrots and a general preference for vegetables cooked softer than we would now, though the recipe itself says nothing about why. Cook to the texture you want and stop.
- Six carrotsAssume medium carrots of roughly 3 oz each, so about 1 lb 2 oz (500 g) trimmed. Two ounces of butter (4 tablespoons, 55 g) is generous for that quantity and is meant to be the body of the sauce.
- Thickening with flourSprinkling raw flour over a wet pan will give lumps. Either work the flour into a little softened butter and stir the paste in off the boil, or dust the flour over the carrots early while the pan is still mostly butter and let it cook a minute before the first liquid goes in.
- NutmegGrate it fresh and use a restrained hand: perhaps an eighth of a teaspoon for this quantity. Pre-ground nutmeg is flat by comparison, and the nutmeg is one of the seasonings that gives the dish its particular flavour.
- StockThe recipe leaves the stock unspecified; a light meat stock would be an unremarkable choice. Chicken stock or water both work; water plus the butter gives a cleaner, sweeter result if the carrots are good.
- Parsley at the endA quarter hour of simmering will dull the parsley. If you want it green, hold it back to the last two or three minutes, or split it between the two.
- YieldFive or six as a side dish, which is about right if the rest of the table is well furnished. Four is more realistic as a modern portion.
"The German way" here signals a braise finished with a flour-thickened sauce and nutmeg -- the family of dishes that in German kitchens goes under names like Möhrengemüse, where root vegetables are stewed in butter and bound rather than boiled and drained. The distinction mattered more then than now: British vegetable cookery of the period leaned heavily on plain boiling, and a recipe that kept the cooking liquid, thickened it and seasoned it with onion, nutmeg and parsley would have read as distinctly Continental. Nutmeg with carrots and other root vegetables is a long-standing pairing in northern European cooking.