Home › Village Receipts › Parsnip Fritters
Parsnip Fritters
Boil tender and mash smooth three large parsnips; beat light two eggs, stir in mashed parsnips and beat hard, add butter and salt, one tablespoon of flour, one cup of milk. Fry as fritters or griddle cakes.
— Mrs. Martin
A short village receipt that assumes you know what fritter batter should look like. The only real judgment calls are the amount of butter and the thickness of the batter.
- Parsnip weight"Three large parsnips" is roughly 1 to 1 1/4 lb before trimming, giving about 2 cups mashed. Peel them, and if the core of a thick root is woody and fibrous, cut it out before boiling.
- Boiling timeCut into 1-inch pieces and boil 15 to 20 minutes, until a knife slides through with no resistance. Underdone parsnip will not mash smooth and leaves strings in the batter.
- Drain them dryThis is the hinge. Parsnips hold a great deal of water; return the drained pieces to the dry hot pan for a minute to steam off before mashing, or the batter will thin out no matter how much flour you add.
- Unmeasured butter and saltThe original gives no quantity. About 1 tablespoon melted butter and 1/2 teaspoon salt suits this volume of batter; more butter makes the fritters greasy rather than richer.
- The milk is a guide, not a ruleOne cup of milk with only one tablespoon of flour gives a very loose batter. Add the milk gradually and stop when the mixture drops thickly from a spoon; for griddle cakes you want it thinner than for spooned fritters.
- FryingShallow-fry in about 1/4 inch of fat at 350-375F, two to three minutes a side, or cook as small cakes on a griddle over medium heat. They are fragile until set, so leave them alone until the edges look dry.
- YieldAbout twelve to fourteen fritters, serving four as a side dish. Best eaten straight from the pan; they soften as they sit.
Parsnips were a standard winter root long before they became a novelty vegetable, valued because they keep for months in a cellar or, better still, in the ground — a frost or two converts their starch to sugar, which is why parsnips dug in early spring taste sweetest. That sweetness explains the fritter treatment: a mashed root bound with egg and milk and fried was a common nineteenth-century way to bring a cheap, plentiful vegetable to the table with some interest, the same formula applied to corn, salsify and squash in books of this period. All that survives of the recipe's origin is the name Mrs. Martin, printed close to the way the instructions would have been spoken, with quantities left to the cook's hand.