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Parsnips, Browned Under Roast Meat
Boil the parsnips until tender, according to the directions given above. Take them up, drain well, sprinkle a little salt and pepper over them, put them in the dripping-pan under the joint they are to accompany, and let them remain before the fire until they are nicely browned. Send them to table in a dish by themselves, with two or three as a garnish round the meat. Time, about a quarter of an hour to brown the parsnips. Probable cost, 1 1/2d. each. Sufficient, one large parsnip for two persons.
A straightforward two-stage method: parboil, then finish in the fat under a roasting joint. The only real translation needed is from open-hearth roasting to an oven.
- The dripping-pan, translatedCassell's assumes a joint turning on a spit before an open fire, with a pan beneath catching the fat. In an oven, set the parboiled parsnips in the roasting tin around the joint, or in a separate shallow tin with two or three spoonfuls of the drippings, on a shelf below the meat.
- HeatBrowning wants a high oven, in the region of 400-425F. If the joint is resting at a lower temperature, pull the parsnips out and give them their quarter-hour in a hot oven on their own.
- Drain and dryThe instruction to drain well is the hinge. Wet parsnips steam rather than brown; leave them in the colander a few minutes and let the surface moisture flash off before they meet the fat.
- Parboiling timeThe "directions given above" refer to an earlier boiling entry not reproduced here; boil until tender, which for large parsnips cut into halves or quarters may be anywhere from about ten minutes to twenty. Stop while they still hold their shape, or they will collapse in the tin.
- A quarter of an hourFifteen minutes is right for a hot oven and pieces already cooked through. Turn them once so both cut faces catch colour.
- YieldOne large parsnip for two people, as stated, which is modest by current appetites; reckon on one medium parsnip per person and core out any woody centre.
- Cost1 1/2d. each is pre-decimal Victorian pricing, given because Cassell's costed nearly every dish for household accounting. It carries no useful conversion.
Parsnips were a staple English winter root long before the potato displaced them, valued because cold in the ground converts their starch to sugar and improves the flavour. That sweetness is exactly why they suit this treatment: sugars on a drained surface caramelise fast in hot beef or mutton fat. Cassell's New Dictionary of Cookery, a fat single-volume reference for middle-class households, treats the parsnip as a matter of course and gives it more than one entry -- this page's own reference to "the directions given above" points to a boiling entry preceding it. The dripping-pan method belongs to hearth roasting, where whatever lay in the pan was seasoned by the joint above it; the same logic survives in the modern habit of roasting potatoes in the meat tin.