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Turnips, Young
Wash and peel a dozen young turnips, and put them into a saucepan with a pint of milk; add a little pepper and salt, and let them simmer gently. When they are half-dressed, put with them half an ounce of butter rolled in flour. Serve very hot. Time to simmer the turnips, about half an hour.
A straightforward milk-braise for spring turnips, thickened at the end with kneaded butter and flour. The only real risk is scorching the milk.
- Quantity and panA dozen young turnips means golf-ball to small-egg size roots, roughly 1 to 1.5 lb. Use a wide pan so they sit in a single layer; a pint of milk should come most of the way up them.
- Keep the heat lowMilk catches on the base long before the turnips are tender. A heavy pan, the lowest possible simmer and an occasional stir are what make this work, and a heat diffuser is worth using on a fierce burner.
- Beurre manié"Half an ounce of butter rolled in flour" is beurre manié: about 15 g soft butter kneaded with a rounded teaspoon of plain flour into a paste. Drop it in as small pellets and swirl the pan so it disperses rather than lumping.
- TimingHalf an hour suits genuinely small turnips. Anything larger than a golf ball should be quartered, and modern supermarket turnips are often tender in 15 to 20 minutes; test with a knife tip rather than the clock.
- PeelingVery young turnips need little more than a scrub, though this recipe does call for peeling; anything with a fibrous or purple-shouldered skin is better peeled thickly, as the woody layer under the skin tends to stay tough.
- SeasoningMilk mutes salt, so season again at the end. A grating of nutmeg, or a spoonful of the cooking milk enriched with extra butter, suits the dish.
- YieldServes four as a vegetable side. Serve the turnips in their thickened milk, which is the point of the dish, not drained.
Cassell's places this among the plainest of English vegetable cookery: a root simmered in milk and bound with flour and butter, a treatment applied through the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries to turnips, onions, celery and cucumbers alike. The beurre mani", the in flour, was a common household thickener. Turnips were a cheap, storable staple in Britain from the agricultural improvements of the eighteenth century onward, and a dish like this belongs to the everyday side of the Victorian table rather than the dinner-party side.