Turnip Salad
Pick early in the morning. Wash one peck and put in cold water. Have ready a pot of boiling water in which a piece of bacon has boiled several hours, and the amount of water become much reduced. Take out the bacon, put in the salad, put the bacon back on top of the salad, and boil till very tender. Dip from the pot with a perforated skimmer, lay in a deep dish, skim the fat from the liquor and pour over the salad. Cover with nicely poached eggs. Cover and send to the table hot. Any other kind of salad might be cooked by this recipe--Mrs.
"Salad" here means the greens, not a cold dish: young turnip tops boiled in pork liquor and served with their pot liquor poured back over. The hinge is the bacon broth — the greens taste of whatever that water has become.
- A peck of greensA peck is 8 dry quarts, which for leafy tops packed loosely is perhaps a couple of pounds of trimmed greens. That cooks down a great deal; expect the volume to collapse sharply in the pot.
- The bacon is not breakfast baconThis calls for a solid piece of cured side meat or streaky salt pork, hock or jowl — something that can simmer for hours and give up fat and salt. Thin sliced supermarket bacon disintegrates and contributes almost nothing to the liquor.
- Watch the saltThe recipe deliberately reduces the pork water "much," concentrating the cure. Taste the liquor before the greens go in and add plain water if it is already aggressive; there is no way to pull salt back out once the greens have absorbed it.
- "Boil till very tender"The recipe sets no time; young turnip tops will take well under an hour, older coarser greens longer. Cook until the ribs give completely.
- Pick early in the morningThis is practical rather than sentimental: leaves cut before the sun is on them hold their water and stay crisp until they hit the pot. The cold-water soak that follows both refreshes them and floats out grit and sand.
- Skimming the fatThe instruction to skim the liquor before pouring it over matters if you want the greens to taste clean rather than greasy. Let the liquor stand a minute or two off the heat so the fat rises, then lift it with a spoon.
- The poached eggsThe recipe does not say where to poach them; water is easier than the salty pot liquor. Set them on top just before serving.
Calling boiled greens a "salad" preserves an older English usage — sallet, or salet, once covered any dish of leaves, cooked or raw, and the sense survived longest in the American South, where "a mess of greens" meant a pot of greens. Turnips earned their place in Southern kitchens twice over: the root stored through winter, and the tops came up fast enough to be cut young in spring and again in autumn. Boiling them with a piece of cured pork until the water thickened into pot liquor is the standard technique of the region, and this collection, assembled from contributed household recipes, records it as a matter of course rather than a specialty. The poached eggs laid over the top are the flourish that turns a side dish into a supper.