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To Cook Parsnips
Boil the parsnips till thoroughly done. Serve with salt, pepper, butter, and cream; or mash the parsnips, mix with an egg batter, and season as before.
A two-line entry that assumes you already know what parsnips do in a pot. The gaps worth filling are size, timing, and what "egg batter" means in the second option.
- Choose small rootsLarge parsnips, roughly more than a couple of inches across at the crown, tend to have a woody core that stays noticeably fibrous even after long boiling. Cut the core out of large ones, or buy medium roots the size of a fat carrot.
- "Thoroughly done"Peeled and cut into 2-inch lengths, parsnips take 15 to 20 minutes in salted water; whole ones can run to 30. They are done when a knife slides in with no resistance at the thickest point. Undercooked parsnip tastes raw and soapy.
- Drain and dryParsnips hold a great deal of water. Return them to the dry hot pan for a minute off the heat before buttering, or the cream sauce will thin out on the plate.
- The cream finishUse heavy cream, not milk, and add it warm with the butter so it clings rather than pooling. About 2 tablespoons butter and 1/4 cup cream serves four.
- Egg batter, translatedThe second method most likely means fried cakes: mash the drained parsnips, beat in one egg per pound with a spoonful or two of flour to bind, season, form into patties and fry in butter until browned on both sides. The mixture should hold its shape on the spoon; add flour a little at a time if it slumps.
- Season firmlyParsnips are markedly sweet. They want more salt and black pepper than you would give a potato; some cooks add a grating of nutmeg to the creamed version.
- YieldTwo pounds of parsnips serves four to six as a side dish, or makes about eight fried cakes.
Parsnips were an important winter root in Britain and were grown in America as well, valued because they keep in the ground through frost and in fact grow sweeter for it — cold converts their starch to sugar, which is why old gardening books tell you to leave the row unlifted until you want it. Housekeeping in Old Virginia (1878), compiled by Marion Cabell Tyree from contributions by Virginia housewives, treats vegetables in exactly this clipped manner: the reader is presumed to have grown the thing and boiled it many times, and needs only the two accepted finishes. The pairing of boiled root with butter and cream on one hand, and mashed-and-fried cakes on the other, recurs in nineteenth-century treatments of parsnips, salsify and similar roots.