Turnips
There are rich juicy kinds, which the Russians eat raw as a whet before dinner. In England we go to the other extreme, and the most common form in which the turnip comes to table is thoroughly well boiled and mashed.
Mashed Turnips.-Peel, slice, and boil half a dozen turnips. Drain them, pass them through a sieve, and then mixing them with flour, nutmeg, pepper, salt, a pat of butter, and a little glaze, stir them over the fire for ten minutes.
Young Turnips.-Peel them, make nice shapes of them, and blanch them for five minutes. Then fry them with a little butter, dredge them with flour, and moisten them with broth. Let them cook very slowly for twenty minutes, and add to them some Allemande sauce with a pinch of sugar. The French sometimes touch them up at the last with some of their mustard.
TURNOVER-the name of a pasty made in very simple fashion. Roll out a sheet of paste: cut out a circle in it. This, when doubled over so as to form a semicircle, with fruit or mincemeat inside, is the Turnover.
Two workable turnip dishes and a definition of a turnover, written for a kitchen that kept meat glaze and mother sauces on hand. The main adjustments are supplying those and cutting the boiling time.
- Do not boil them to collapseHalf a dozen peeled, sliced turnips need 12-15 minutes in salted water, until a knife goes in without resistance. The Victorian habit of "thoroughly well boiled" is exactly what gives turnips their watery, sulphurous reputation.
- Drain them dryAfter sieving, the purée will be loose. Stirring it over the fire for ten minutes, as directed, is not a flavour step but a drying one, and the flour is there to bind what water remains. Use no more than a tablespoon of flour for six turnips, or the mash turns pasty.
- Glaze"A little glaze" means meat glaze, veal or beef stock reduced to a syrup that sets firm when cold. A teaspoon of commercial demi-glace concentrate, or a spoonful of stock reduced hard in a small pan, does the same work: it is the only savoury depth in the dish.
- Allemande sauceA velouté (butter-flour roux with veal or chicken stock) finished off the heat with egg yolk, cream and lemon. It must not boil once the yolk is in or it will curdle. Half a cup is ample for a dish of young turnips.
- "Nice shapes"The young turnips are to be turned, pared into small barrels or olives of roughly equal size, so they cook evenly and look deliberate. Trimmings go into soup.
- Blanching and slow cookingFive minutes in boiling water takes the raw edge off; the twenty minutes that follow are a slow braise in butter and broth, barely bubbling, until the liquid is nearly gone and the turnips are glazed. Turn them once or twice rather than stirring.
- The mustardDijon, stirred in off the heat at the very end. Added earlier it goes bitter and its aroma cooks away.
- Turnover pastryThe book specifies only 'a sheet of paste' cut into a circle; it names no pastry type, no size, and gives no baking instruction. Shortcrust or rough puff rolled thin to a saucer-sized circle, edges damped and crimped, suits the description. With fruit fillings, two or three vents help, as sealed pasties can split. Baking is a modern addition here: a hot oven, roughly 400-425F, for 20-25 minutes.
- YieldSix turnips mashed serves four to six as a side; a dozen turned young turnips serves four.
Kettner's Book of the Table (1877) was written by the journalist E. S. Dallas and named for Auguste Kettner, the Soho restaurateur, and it reads throughout as a Frenchified rebuke to English cooking, this entry included. Turnips had long been a cheap winter root of the English field and cottage, and Dallas is pointing at the French kitchen's alternative, where young turnips are turned, braised in butter and broth, and finished with a sauce and a pinch of sugar. The raw Russian turnip he mentions as a whet, an appetiser, is not fanciful; sweet, mild varieties have been eaten out of hand in parts of northern and eastern Europe. The turnover appended at the end belongs here because the book is arranged alphabetically, and its plainness is part of the point: a circle of pastry folded over fruit needed neither a mould nor a dish.