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Kohl-Rabi
Kohl-rabi or kale turnip is a cultivated variety of kale or cabbage, distinguished by the swelling of the stem in turnip form. This swollen portion is used for food, cooked like turnips or uncooked in slices like radishes. 6 large roots 1 tablespoon vinegar 2 tablespoons flour
The loose-leaf format has worked against this page: the ingredient list survives but the method does not. What the three ingredients tell you is that Mrs. Fryer intended boiled kohlrabi dressed with a flour-thickened sauce sharpened with vinegar, in the manner of creamed turnips.
- What the list impliesSix bulbs, two tablespoons flour and a tablespoon of vinegar is the skeleton of a light white sauce: the flour cooked in butter or in the cooking liquid, loosened with milk or the vegetable water, and finished with vinegar. Fat, liquid and seasoning are all missing and must be supplied by judgment.
- "Roots" is a misnomerThe edible part is a swollen stem sitting above the soil, not a root. It behaves like a firm turnip in the pot but tastes closer to a broccoli stalk, sweeter and less sulphurous.
- Six large roots is a lotLarge kohlrabi run 4 to 6 inches across and can weigh three-quarters of a pound or more each, so six is several pounds of vegetable before trimming. That is eight to ten servings; two or three bulbs is a sensible modern batch, with the flour and vinegar scaled down.
- Peel deeplyAnything over about 3 inches in diameter has a tough fibrous layer under the skin that stays woody however long it boils. Cut it away with a knife rather than a peeler until you reach pale, translucent flesh.
- TimingCut in half-inch dice, kohlrabi is tender in 10 to 15 minutes in salted water; in thick slices, 20 to 25. Some older cookbooks call for 45 minutes or more, which leaves it watery and flat.
- The raw optionThe suggestion to slice it uncooked like radishes is the better use of small spring bulbs. Peeled and cut thin, dressed with the vinegar and a little oil and salt, it makes a crisp salad, and the flour is simply not needed.
- Save the leavesIf you buy kohlrabi with tops attached, the greens cook like collards or kale in 8 to 10 minutes and are worth more than the market usually charges for them.
Kohlrabi is a cabbage bred for its stem rather than its head or root, and its name is often glossed as a compound of cabbage and turnip — though the word in fact came into German from Italian cavoli rape — which is why English-language books of this period so often render it as "kale turnip" or "turnip-cabbage," exactly as Mrs. Fryer does here. It was long a staple in German, Austrian, Hungarian and northern Italian cooking, and it was grown and catalogued in America through the nineteenth century, while household cookbooks seem to have treated it as something needing definition first and instructions second. The explanatory opening sentence, and the fact that a full method never quite arrives, says a good deal about how unfamiliar the vegetable still was to the average American cook when this loose-leaf book was compiled.