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Greens, Turnip, Boiled
Put two table-spoonfuls of salt into a gallon of water: let it boil quickly, and remove the scum. Wash the greens in three or four waters (removing the decayed outer leaves) and throw them into the water. Leave the saucepan uncovered, and boil the greens rapidly until tender. Drain the water well from them, and serve. If the water be very hard, a tiny piece of soda may be added, but care must be taken that it is tiny. If plenty of water is not allowed, turnip-greens will be bitter. Time, about twenty minutes. Probable cost, 4d. per bunch. Sufficient for five or six persons.
A plain Victorian method for turnip tops, and the one place it diverges sharply from modern practice is the pinch of soda and the twenty-minute clock.
- What the greens areTurnip greens are the leafy tops of the root, sold in bunches in the period and still found in Southern US and Italian markets (cime di rapa is a close relative). Mustard greens, collards or kale can stand in, though collards want longer and mustard less.
- Skip the sodaThe "tiny piece of soda" was added to keep the green colour in hard water. Bicarbonate raises the pH, breaks down cell walls to a slippery mush and destroys much of the vitamin C. Leave it out; a generous volume of fast-boiling water and a short cooking time will keep the colour reasonably bright without it.
- TimeTwenty minutes suited older, coarser bunches. Young turnip tops are tender in 5 to 10 minutes of hard boiling; taste a thick stem rather than watching the clock.
- Volume of waterThe gallon is not padding. Brassica leaves are bitter and sulphurous, and a large volume of rapidly boiling water dilutes those compounds and keeps the pot back to the boil the instant the greens go in.
- SaltTwo tablespoons to a gallon is under 1 per cent salinity by modern reckoning; it seasons the leaves as they cook rather than salting the pot for the sake of it. Most of it goes down the drain with the water.
- Lid offKeeping the pan uncovered lets the volatile sulphur compounds escape instead of condensing back onto the leaves. It also helps the colour stay bright.
- DrainingTurnip tops hold a surprising amount of water. Drain in a colander and press gently with the back of a spoon, or the serving dish fills with grey liquid.
- Serving and yield"Sufficient for five or six persons" assumes a Victorian table where greens were one of several dishes; reckon on three or four modern side portions per large bunch. Butter, black pepper and a splash of vinegar or lemon are the traditional finish.
Turnip tops were among the cheapest green vegetables in the Victorian market — fourpence a bunch here, against far more for asparagus or seakale — and they arrive in Cassell's in the run of plain boiled greens that a large household cooked daily. The turnip was grown chiefly for its root and for winter fodder, and the leaves were a by-product eaten young in spring, which may be part of why the book treats them as a bunch rather than by weight. The instruction about soda reflects a real domestic problem: parts of Britain, London and the south-east in particular, drew hard water, and cooks reached for bicarbonate to keep boiled greens from going olive-drab. Later nutritional work through the twentieth century showed how much the practice cost in vitamin content, and it fell out of favour, but the warning to use only a tiny piece suggests that cooks already knew that too much left the greens sodden and soapy.