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Boiled Parsnips
Wash and scrape the parsnips, and carefully remove any blemishes there may be about them. Cut them into quarters, and throw them into a saucepan of boiling water, slightly salted. Let them boil quickly, until they are sufficiently tender of skin to pierce them easily, then drain and send to table as quickly as possible.
A plain nineteenth-century treatment that still works, provided the parsnips are handled with an eye to their woody cores and their tendency to fall apart once tender.
- Size and the coreQuartering suits a big root, though the recipe does not say why it asks for it. Anything thicker than about an inch and a half at the crown may have a fibrous core worth cutting out; small young roots can be halved or left whole.
- Cut for even cookingQuartering lengthwise leaves thick shoulders and thin tips in the same pot. Cut the tapered end into longer pieces and the thick end into shorter ones so everything finishes together.
- TimingQuartered pieces take roughly 10 to 15 minutes at a fast boil, whole small roots 20 to 25. "Sufficiently tender of skin to pierce them easily" is the test, but stop the moment a knife slides in cleanly, as parsnips go from firm to waterlogged mush quickly.
- Salt the water properlySalt the water -- the recipe says only 'slightly salted'; about a teaspoon per quart is a reasonable modern reading, though what the phrase meant in practice is not recorded.
- Drain and dryAfter draining, return them to the empty hot pan for a minute over low heat to steam off surface water. This is the difference between parsnips that hold butter and parsnips that weep onto the plate.
- Sending to table quicklyBoiled parsnips turn pasty and watery as they sit and cool, which may be why the recipe asks for them to go to table as quickly as possible.
- YieldAllow about 6 oz of untrimmed parsnips per person, so roughly 1 1/2 lb for four as a side dish. Butter is the usual accompaniment; the recipe itself specifies none.