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Parsnips Boiled, with Cream Sauce
If they are young and tender scrape them and throw each as soon as finished into cold water, to prevent discoloration. If old they must be pared and cut into quarters lengthwise. Put them in a saucepan of boiling water and boil till tender. If young, three-quarters of an hour, if old, one hour and a quarter will be needed. When tender, drain, put on a heated dish heads all one way; cover with Cream Sauce or English drawn butter and serve with corned beef or boiled salt fish.
A plain boiled vegetable with a sauce, written when parsnips were larger, coarser and often cellared through winter. The timings are the part that needs rethinking.
- The timings are far too longForty-five minutes to an hour and a quarter reflects big, woody, over-wintered roots. Modern market parsnips, cut into even pieces, are tender in 10-15 minutes in simmering water; whole medium roots take about 20. Test with a knife tip rather than watching the clock.
- Salt the waterThe recipe does not mention salt at all. About a teaspoon of salt per quart makes a real difference to a root this sweet and bland at the centre.
- The woody coreLarge parsnips have a fibrous core that stays tough however long you boil. Quarter them lengthwise as directed and cut the core out.
- Cold water against discolorationScraped parsnips brown on contact with air. Dropping them straight into cold water works; a squeeze of lemon in the water helps further.
- Cream SauceIn this period that means a white sauce: roughly 2 tablespoons butter, 2 tablespoons flour and a cup of milk or cream, cooked a few minutes so the flour loses its raw taste, seasoned with salt, pepper and a little nutmeg if you like.
- English drawn butterNot clarified butter, despite the name. It is a butter sauce thickened with a little flour and hot water, whisked smooth, essentially a thinner white sauce made with water in place of milk.
- "Heads all one way"A serving convention: arrange the tapered pieces parallel on the platter so the sauce can be poured over without them looking tumbled. Purely cosmetic, and still worth doing.
- Yield and pairingThe recipe gives no quantity; about 1 1/2 lb of parsnips will serve four as a side. The suggested partners, corned beef and boiled salt fish, both trade on the contrast between salt meat and sweet root.
Parsnips were a staple sweetener and starch in northern European kitchens long before the potato displaced them, and they were still ordinary winter food in American households when this book was written. They were commonly left in the ground or stored cold over winter, since freezing converts some of their starch to sugar and makes them noticeably sweeter. Old cookbooks distinguish carefully between "young and tender" summer roots and the "old" ones that need paring and quartering. The pairing with corned beef and boiled salt fish points to the same domestic economy: salted provisions carried a household through winter, and a sweet, mild boiled root was the natural foil.