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Turnips, Fried
Boil three or four turnips till they are three-parts dressed. Take them up, drain them, cut them into slices, and fry these in hot fat till they are lightly browned and quite tender. Drain them, and serve with fried or boiled cutlets. Or peel them and cut them into very thin slices. Let these lie in cold water for an hour, then drain them. Dissolve a slice of butter in a stewpan, and in this steam a table-spoonful of chopped onion for five minutes. Put in the slices of turnip, sprinkle a little pepper and salt over, and let them steam till they are soft. A spoonful or two of water may be added if there is any fear that they will burn.
Two methods sit inside one entry: a parboil-then-fry, and a butter-and-onion sweat. Both hinge on getting the turnip past the raw, sulphurous stage before it browns.
- Three-parts dressedVictorian shorthand for about three-quarters cooked. Simmer peeled, whole or halved turnips 10-15 minutes depending on size, until a knife enters with some resistance; they will finish in the fat. Fully soft turnips collapse in the pan.
- Which turnipThe entry most likely intends the white or purple-top garden turnip rather than swede or rutabaga. Swede can be used but is sweeter, denser and needs longer boiling. Smaller turnips are generally less bitter than large, older ones.
- Dry them properlyDrain and then leave the slices on a cloth or rack for several minutes. Turnip holds a great deal of water and wet slices will steam rather than brown, whatever the fat temperature.
- Hot fatAround 350-375F in enough fat to come partway up the slices. Dripping or lard gives the flavour the recipe assumes; a neutral oil or clarified butter works. Cut slices a scant quarter-inch thick and fry in batches.
- A slice of butterAn imprecise period measure meaning a pat cut off the block: read it as roughly 1 to 1 1/2 oz, 30-40 g, for three or four turnips.
- The hour in cold waterIn the second method this leaches some of the mustard-family sharpness and firms the slices. It is optional if your turnips are young, but it does noticeably soften the flavour of older, larger roots.
- Stewpan and steamingA stewpan is a straight-sided saucepan; use any heavy pan with a tight lid. Keep the heat low so the onion softens without colouring, and add the spoonful of water early rather than waiting for a scorch.
- Yield and servingThree or four turnips make a vegetable dish for about four. Cutlets in a book of this period would usually be mutton, lamb or veal; the fried version also suits pork or a plain roast.
Turnips were an everyday root of British cookery before the potato came to dominate, cheap enough to feed both households and livestock and reliable in cold ground. Cassell's New Dictionary of Cookery, compiled in the late nineteenth century as an alphabetical reference rather than a narrative cookbook, gives the vegetable a run of short entries -- boiled, mashed, in soup, glazed, fried -- the sort of variation a cook would want for a vegetable to be handled all winter. Frying was a way of making a plain boiled vegetable more interesting, while the butter-and-onion sweat resembles the French technique of etuver.