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Parsnip
THE cultivated Parsnip has been produced as a vegetable for eating since early Roman times. The roots, which are the edible part, afford starch abundantly, containing also as chemical constituents albumin, sugar, pectose, dextrin, fat, cellulose, mineral matters, and water, but less sugar than carrots, or turnips. The volatile oil with which this root is furnished causes it sometimes to disagree, and gives a flavour of characteristic peculiarity thereto. Parsnips are highly nutritive, and make a capital supplement to salt fish in Lent. In Gerarde's day Parsnips were known as Mypes. They require careful cooking, without excess of water, else the sugar is mainly boiled out. "Soft words," says an old adage, "butter no Parsnips." The roots may be stewed with advantage so as to retain their principal qualities. "Take nice Tender Parsnips, and cut them in rings; put them into a stewing-pot in layers, sprinkling over them some sugar (perhaps a little flour), and adding butter (a small piece between each layer); pour three-quarters of a pint of water over, and let it simmer for two hours, giving the pot an occasional toss." For Parsnip fritters: "Wash, and scrape the Parsnips, and cut them in slices; cover them with boiling water, and cook them until tender; then mash them
Two working recipes sit inside this reference entry: a layered stew and a fritter whose instructions break off mid-sentence. Both need quantities supplied and one of them needs its timing halved.
- Cook them dry, not wetThe entry's own hinge: parsnip sugars leach into cooking water. Keep the liquid minimal, lid on, and finish uncovered so what is left reduces to a glaze rather than being poured away.
- Three-quarters of a pintAn imperial pint is 20 fl oz, so this is 15 fl oz, near enough 13/4 US cups. For a stewing pot layered with about 2 lb of sliced parsnip that is ample.
- Two hours is too longTwo hours is likely too long -- Winter-stored roots may have wanted longer, but modern parsnips sliced into rings are tender in 25 to 35 minutes at a bare simmer; two hours gives you sweetened mush.
- Give the pot an occasional tossBecause the layers are stacked with butter and sugar between them, nothing gets stirred. Tossing redistributes the butter without breaking the rings, which a spoon would.
- The coreLarge parsnips develop a fibrous, pale core that stays stringy however long you cook it. Quarter big roots lengthwise and cut it out before slicing into rings.
- The fritters, unfinishedThe text stops at "then mash them." A common completion in cookery of the period is to beat the mash with an egg and a spoonful of flour, season, form into small cakes and fry in butter or dripping until browned both sides. Drain the boiled parsnip thoroughly first or the batter will be too slack to hold.
- Sugar and flour are optionalThe entry itself reckons parsnips lower in sugar than carrots or turnips, though they are sweet enough. The sprinkled sugar suits the salt-fish pairing the entry mentions; with roast meat, leave it out and let the flour alone thicken the butter and water into sauce.
- YieldNeither recipe gives one. Two pounds of parsnips stewed serves four as a side; the same mashed makes roughly eight small fritters.
Parsnips are often said to have carried much of the sweetening and starching work in northern European kitchens before the potato was widely grown and before cheap cane sugar arrived, which is why they turn up so persistently in Lenten cookery — the entry's remark about salt fish points at a genuine and very old pairing, the sweet root offsetting heavily salted cod or ling on days when meat was forbidden. The claim about "Mypes" in Gerard's day should be treated as this author's reading rather than settled etymology; sixteenth-century herbals used a tangle of overlapping names for parsnips, skirrets and carrots. The proverb quoted, usually given as "fine words butter no parsnips," is recorded from the seventeenth century and depends on the assumption that a parsnip without butter is a poor thing indeed. The chemical inventory at the head of the entry — albumin, pectose, dextrin — is the proximate-analysis vocabulary of late Victorian food science, and its appearance in a book called Meals Medicinal is the whole point: the author is arguing that ordinary vegetables be prescribed rather than merely served.