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Parsnips, Mashed
Scrape and boil four or five parsnips in salted water until quite tender, then drain them, mash them, and press them through a colander. Put them into a stewpan, with two or three table-spoonfuls of cream; failing this, of milk, thickened with a small tea-spoonful of flour and a little butter. Stir the parsnips over the fire until the liquid is absorbed and they are quite hot; then turn them into a tureen, and serve immediately. Time to boil, from three-quarters of an hour to an hour and a half, according to age and size. Probable cost, 9d. Sufficient for five or six persons.
A straightforward Victorian vegetable purée that needs little translation, though the boiling time and the seasoning both want attention.
- The boiling timeThree-quarters of an hour to an hour and a half suits whole, mature roots, though the recipe does not say whether they go in whole or cut. Peeled and cut into even chunks, modern parsnips are tender in 15 to 20 minutes, and longer only waterlogs them.
- The woody coreLarge parsnips develop a fibrous central core that will not break down and will not pass a sieve. Halve them lengthways and cut it out before boiling.
- Pressing through a colanderA colander here means a perforated metal bowl used as a coarse sieve, worked with a wooden spoon. A food mill or ricer does the same job faster. A food processor is best avoided — parsnips can turn gluey when whipped by a blade.
- StewpanA straight-sided saucepan with a lid, not a casserole dish. Any wide, heavy pan works, and wide is better for the drying-off stage.
- The hinge: driving off the waterBoiled parsnips hold a great deal of liquid, and the point of stirring over the fire until the liquid is absorbed is to evaporate it rather than to warm the purée. Keep the heat moderate and keep the spoon moving, or the bottom scorches and the sweetness turns bitter.
- Cream, or the milk substituteTwo or three tablespoons is a modest amount for four or five roots — enough to loosen, not to make it soupy. The flour-thickened milk is a thrift measure standing in for cream's body; if you have cream, skip the flour entirely.
- SeasoningBeyond the salted cooking water, none is given. Parsnips are sweet enough to need salt, white pepper and a scrape of nutmeg or a squeeze of lemon to keep the purée from cloying.
- Yield and costFive or six portions, as stated, though four or five parsnips is generous for that number by current appetites. The ninepence is a period price note, of no use except as a reminder that parsnips were among the cheapest things on the table.
Parsnips were a staple sweetener and bulk food in Britain long before the potato displaced them, valued because frost improves them — the starch converts to sugar in cold ground, so the roots were left in the earth and lifted through winter. That seasonality is why they turn up so often in Victorian household books as a Lent and early-spring vegetable, and why they were traditionally eaten with salt fish. Boiling, sieving and enriching with cream is often said to have been a common nineteenth-century way of making a coarse root fit for a tureen at a middle-class table, applied equally to turnips, carrots and artichokes. The instruction to press through a colander rather than simply mash reflects a period preference for smooth, uniform purées, which may perhaps be read as a matter of gentility as much as texture.