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Turnips, Puree Of
Pare and wash half a dozen large sound turnips, and split them into halves, or even into quarters. Boil them till they are very tender, and press the water thoroughly from them. Pass them through a hair sieve, and put them back into the saucepan. Dredge a small quantity of flour over them, and add a little white pepper and salt, a slice of butter, half a teaspoonful of white sugar, and a quarter of a pint of cream or milk. Stir them over the fire until they are quite dry and stiff. Serve the puree in the centre of a dish, and arrange cut-lets, etc., neatly round it. Some cooks add a little grated nutmeg or a little powdered ginger to turnip puree. Time to simmer with the cream, about ten minutes; to boil, from three-quarters of an hour to an hour and a half, according to age and size. Probable cost, 6d. per bunch. Sufficient for five or six persons.
A straightforward vegetable purée, but the whole success of it lies in how dry you get the turnips before the cream goes in. Everything else is seasoning.
- Drive off the water firstTurnips hold a great deal of moisture, and a wet purée will slump on the dish instead of holding its shape in the centre. Press the boiled turnips hard in a colander or a clean towel, and keep stirring over heat after the cream goes in until the mixture pulls away from the pan.
- Boiling timeThree-quarters of an hour to an hour and a half assumes large, old, coarse winter roots. Supermarket turnips cut into quarters are tender in 20 to 30 minutes; test with a knife rather than a clock.
- Half a dozen large turnipsPerhaps 2 1/2 to 3 1/2 lb trimmed, depending on what counts as large. If you are using swede (rutabaga), the purée will be sweeter and a pronounced yellow-orange.
- A quarter of a pintAn imperial quarter-pint is 5 fl oz, about 140 ml, a little under two-thirds of a US cup. Add it in stages; how much the purée will take depends on how dry you got it.
- A slice of butterA period way of saying a thick pat, about 1 to 1 1/2 oz. There is no need to be precise.
- Hair sieveA horsehair sieve; hair was generally preferred to metal for pale or acid foods, which metal could discolour or taint. A food mill, potato ricer or drum sieve does the same job; a food processor risks an unpleasantly slack, pasty texture.
- The flourA dredging of flour is there to bind the loose moisture. Let the purée cook a few minutes after it goes in so it does not taste raw, or leave it out entirely if the turnips are already dry.
- ServingFeeds five or six as a side. The dish is built as a border: purée mounded in the middle, cutlets or chops overlapping around the edge. Nutmeg suits it better than the ginger, though both are period-correct.
Turnips were among the cheapest and most abundant roots in Victorian Britain — this recipe quotes sixpence a bunch — and they were valued as much for winter cattle feed as for the table. Pressing a cooked vegetable through a sieve and finishing it with butter and cream is a French technique that English cookery books of the later nineteenth century took up widely, and mounding the purée in the centre of the dish with cutlets ranged around it is the standard garnished-entrée presentation of the period. Pairing turnip with lamb or mutton cutlets is traditional and long-standing: the root's slight bitterness and sugar cut the fat of the meat.