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Turnips in White Sauce
INGREDIENTS for dish for 4 or 5 persons. or 8 turnips, 1 oz. of butter, 1/2 pint of white sauce.
AVERAGE COST, 8d.
Peel and cut the turnips in the shape of pears or marbles; boil them in salt and water, to which has been added a little butter, until tender; then take them out, drain, arrange them on a dish, and pour over the white sauce made by either of the recipes, and to which has been added a small lump of sugar. In winter, when other vegetables are scarce, this will be found a very good and pretty-looking dish; when approved, a little mustard may be added to the sauce.
TIME.-About hour to boil the turnips.
SEASONABLE in winter.
TURNIPS. "Vain effort 'tis to try and feed the brain, Unless a healthy body's nurtured too."-OLD WRITER.
VANILLA CREAM.
ANILLA Cream. -INGREDIENTS for 1 quart.-1 pint of milk, the yolks of 6 eggs, 6 oz. of sugar, 1 oz. of isinglass or Swinborne's gelatine, flavouring to taste of essence of vanilla. AVERAGE COST. with gelatine. 1s. 3d.
Put the milk and sugar into a saucepan, and let it get hot over a slow fire; beat up the yolks of the eggs, to which add gradually the sweetened milk; flavour the whole with essence of vanilla, put the mixture into a jug, and place this jug in a saucepan of VANILLA CREAM. boiling water. Stir the contents with a wooden spoon one way until the mixture thickens, but do not allow it to boil, or it will be full of lumps. Take it off the fire; VANILLA CUSTARD SAUCE. stir in the isinglass or gelatine, which should be previously dissolved in about 1/4 pint of water, and boiled for 2 or 3 minutes; pour the cream into an oiled mould, put it in a cool place to set, and turn it out carefully on a dish. Instead of using the essence of vanilla, a pod may be boiled in the milk until the flavour is well extracted.
A pod, or a pod and a half, will be found sufficient for the above proportion of ingredients.
TIME. About 10 minutes to stir the mixture.
SEASONABLE at any time.
A simple winter side that stands or falls on the shaping and the sauce. The turnips are cut down to even pear or marble shapes so they cook at the same rate and look deliberate on the dish.
- QuantityThe ingredient line has lost its lower figure; read it as 6 to 8 medium turnips for four or five people. Allow for heavy trimming, since carving them to shape loses a fair amount of the weight.
- Half a pint of white sauceThat is 10 fl oz in imperial measure, a little under 1 1/4 US cups. The recipe points you to its own white sauce recipes rather than specifying one; keep whichever you use loose enough to coat rather than blanket.
- Boiling timeThe time line has dropped its fraction. Marble-sized pieces are tender in 10 to 15 minutes, pears cut from a whole turnip in 20 to 25. Test with a knife tip rather than watching the clock; overcooked turnip collapses into water.
- Butter in the cooking waterThe recipe gives no reason for the butter added to the salted water; it may simply help keep the surfaces from drying and the pieces from scuffing against each other. A gentle boil serves the same end.
- The lump of sugarA single sugar cube, roughly a teaspoon, stirred into the finished sauce. Turnips grown late in the year can be sharp, and the sugar rounds off that edge without making the dish sweet.
- Turnip or swedeWhite summer turnips are mild and quick; the large yellow-fleshed swede sold in some places as turnip is denser, stronger and needs the longer end of the timing. Either works, but the white kind suits the delicate sauce better.
- Mustard variationA scant teaspoon of made English mustard whisked into the warm sauce is enough. Add it off the heat, since heat dulls mustard and can turn it bitter.
- DrainingDrain the turnips thoroughly and let them steam dry for a minute before saucing. Residual water thins the sauce and pools around the dish.
Turnips carried English kitchens through the winter for centuries before refrigeration and imported produce, and Mrs Beeton says as much outright: this is a dish for the season when other vegetables are scarce. The trick of cutting a cheap root into pears or marbles belongs to a wider Victorian habit of dressing up humble food by giving it shape, the same impulse behind turned carrots and moulded potatoes. Turnips had also been at the centre of the eighteenth-century agricultural improvements in field rotation, which is why they were plentiful and inexpensive enough to cost eightpence a dish here while still being worth an hour's knife work. The dish sits in the book among the plain vegetable entries, where the sauce does the persuading.