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Parsnips
Wash, scrape, and cook in boiling salted water until tender. Cut in halves, spread with salt and butter, and serve hot; or mash, season, and sauté in butter.
A bare-bones instruction of the sort common in turn-of-the-century vegetable chapters, where the cook was assumed to know the rest. A few particulars are worth filling in.
- Choose the roots carefullyLook for parsnips no thicker than about 2 inches at the crown; larger ones tend to have a woody, fibrous core that stays tough however long you cook it. If the core is tough after cooking, split the root lengthwise and lift it out.
- Scraping vs. peelingScraping with a knife back was standard when parsnips came out of sand or a root cellar with thin skins. Supermarket parsnips are better peeled outright with a vegetable peeler.
- TimingThe original gives none. Whole medium parsnips take roughly 20-30 minutes in boiling water; cut into 2-inch lengths, 12-15 minutes. They are done when a knife slides in with no resistance. Overcooked parsnips turn to water-logged mush and will not sauté.
- Salting the waterAbout 1 teaspoon salt per quart. Parsnips are high in sugar and take salt well; the first serving suggestion adds still more salt at the table.
- The sautéFor the mashed version, drain thoroughly and let the steam escape before mashing, or the purée will be too loose to brown. Cook in butter over medium-high heat, undisturbed, until a crust forms on the underside.
- QuantityAllow about 1/2 lb per person as a side dish, roughly 2 lb for four.
- DiscolorationCut parsnips brown at the edges on standing. Drop them into cold water until you are ready to cook, or cut them immediately before.
Parsnips were a staple sweetener and winter vegetable in northern Europe long before sugar beets or the potato took hold, and they carried over into American kitchen gardens as a reliable root that could be left in the ground through frost — cold converts some of the starch to sugar, which is why parsnips lifted after a freeze taste noticeably sweeter. By the time Lowney's book appeared, the parsnip is often said to have slipped down the ranks of American vegetables, treated as plain winter fare rather than anything to build a dish around, which may account for the terseness here: boil, butter, or mash and fry. The brevity is characteristic of vegetable chapters in this period generally, written on the assumption that any cook already knew what tender meant.