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Turnips, Glazed, with Gravy
Pare four or five large turnips wash and drain them, and cut them into slices of uniform size, or turn them into a ball or pear shape. Dissolve in a deep saucepan as much fresh butter as will cover the bottom of the pan, throw in the turnips, and fry till they are brightly browned. Drain the butter from them, and pour over as much good stock as will cover them. Let them simmer gently until they are nearly tender. Remove the lid, put the saucepan over a quick fire, and let the sauce boil quickly until it begins to thicken. Take the turnips up, being careful not to break them, arrange neatly on a dish, and pour the gravy over them. Time, about twenty minutes to simmer the turnips. Probable cost, turnips, 5d. to 7d. per bunch. Sufficient for four or five persons.
A straightforward glazed turnip, but the whole dish rests on the reduction at the end: the stock has to concentrate to a syrupy glaze without the turnips collapsing.
- "Turn them into a ball or pear shape"Turning means paring each piece into a smooth even shape with a small knife, so all the pieces cook at the same rate and the finished dish looks deliberate. Uniform slices or 1-inch chunks work just as well if you are not chasing the presentation.
- "A quick fire"High heat, uncovered, to drive off water fast. Watch the pan from this point on -- a glaze goes from thin to scorched in under a minute.
- The stock does the workWith only butter, turnips and stock, the flavour comes almost entirely from the stock. Use a well-flavoured unsalted or lightly salted homemade or good-quality chicken or beef stock; anything already salty, such as a cube, will concentrate as the sauce reduces and can end up unpleasantly salty.
- Butter that will not burnWhole butter at browning heat scorches its milk solids. Clarified butter, or butter with a spoonful of neutral oil, browns the turnips cleanly.
- Choose the turnips carefullyLarge old turnips can be woody, fibrous and sharply bitter. Small to medium purple-top turnips, firm and heavy for their size, give the sweetness this treatment depends on.
- The twenty minutes is a guide, not a ruleModern turnips cut small can be nearly tender in 10 to 12 minutes. Test with a knife tip and start the reduction while they still have some resistance, since they carry on cooking in the boiling stock.
- Lifting them outA slotted spoon and a light hand. If pieces break, the fragments will still thicken the sauce, but the dish loses its point.
- Yield and servingFour to five as a side, alongside roast beef, lamb, duck or a boiled joint. Season at the end, after the glaze has concentrated, and finish with chopped parsley if you like.
Glazing root vegetables in butter and reduced stock is a technique associated with French practice, and the instruction to "turn" turnips into balls or pears suggests the book is reproducing a professionally trained cook's habit. The turnip itself was a humbler thing in Victorian Britain -- widely grown as a field crop for cattle as well as a kitchen vegetable, and cheap enough that the book quotes it by the bunch in pence -- so dressing it with good stock and butter was a way of promoting a plain root to a dish fit for a dinner table. The pear-shaped presentation belongs to the same nineteenth-century taste for shaping vegetables decoratively, which also produced turned potatoes and olive-shaped cuts of carrot.