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Turnip Cups
Boil and halve some turnips, scoop out the centres, and fill with peas, carrots in dice, beans, beetroot, or anything that will form pleasing contrasts in colour. These can be put round a dish of lamb or veal. The scooped-out part can be used for a puree, and, if liked, the cups put round it. Before filling the cups, coat them with white sauce.
A Victorian garnish rather than a dish in its own right: turnips hollowed into cups, glazed with white sauce and filled with contrasting vegetables to ring a roast. The instructions assume a cook who already knows how to boil a turnip and make a bechamel, so the useful detail is all in the handling.
- Undercook the turnipsBoil them only until a knife meets slight resistance, around 12-15 minutes for medium roots, then cool before scooping. Fully tender turnip collapses the moment you hollow it.
- Choose the right rootSmall, dense white turnips about 2-2.5 inches across hold their shape best; large field turnips and swedes are coarser and more likely to go woolly when scooped thin. Leave a wall about a quarter-inch thick.
- ScoopingA melon baller or a teaspoon with a sharpened edge works better than a knife. Halve the turnip across its width, not stem to root, so each half sits flat.
- White sauceThe coating is a thin bechamel. The recipe gives no reason for it beyond 'coat them with white sauce'; in practice it glazes the cut surface and helps hold the filling. It should be thin enough to coat and cling, not to pool.
- The fillingsPeas, diced carrot, beans and beetroot are all cooked separately and drained hard before they go in. Beetroot bleeds, so fill those cups last or keep them at one side of the platter.
- TemperatureEverything should be hot at the moment of assembly; the recipe gives no reheating step. If the cups cool while the fillings finish, keep them warm.
- The pureeThe recipe says the scooped-out flesh can be used for a puree, with the cups arranged round it, but gives no method. Turnip holds a great deal of water, so dry the mash over low heat before enriching it.
- YieldThe recipe gives no quantities. As a garnish, one to two halves per person is a reasonable guide.
Vegetable cups, cases and croustades were a familiar device in late-Victorian cookery writing, where a roast ringed with neat, contrasting colour was admired. Hollowed roots also suited the period's dislike of waste, since the scooped centre became the puree the cups were arranged around. Turnips were a cheap winter vegetable in the English kitchen, and treatments like this one belong to a broader effort in the era's cookery writing to lift ordinary root vegetables into something worth setting before guests. The technique has clear affinities with French garnishing practice, where vegetables cut into uniform shapes and filled with a contrasting salpicon were a familiar part of a cook's repertoire.