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Parsnips
Wash, peel and boil until done. This requires about an hour. Cut lengthwise strips. Dip in butter, then in flour and saute on both sides until brown. They can be mashed as potatoes, mixed with an egg, seasoned and made into cakes, dipped in flour and sauted as above.
A two-in-one entry: boiled parsnips finished as sauteed batons, or mashed and bound into cakes. The whole thing hinges on not overcooking the boil.
- An hour is far too longWhole peeled parsnips are tender in 15 to 25 minutes depending on thickness; cut pieces in 10 to 15. An hour gives you waterlogged mush that will not hold a shape for the saute. Boil only until a knife slides in with slight resistance, then drain and dry well.
- "Dip in butter"Almost certainly melted butter rather than softened. Melt a few tablespoons in a shallow dish, roll the strips through it, then dredge in seasoned flour. The butter acts as the glue for the flour, so the pan itself will need additional fat or oil.
- The woody coreLarge winter parsnips have a fibrous central core that stays stringy however long you cook it. Halve the root lengthwise after peeling and cut the core out; smaller parsnips, under about an inch and a half at the crown, do not need it.
- Season before flouringThe original says nothing about salt until the cakes. Salt the cooking water and salt the flour, or the finished strips taste flat against all that butter.
- The cakesMash while hot, cool to warm before adding the egg or it scrambles, and count on one egg per pound of mashed parsnip. The mash is wetter than potato, so chill the shaped cakes 20 minutes before flouring and they will hold in the pan.
- Pan heatParsnips are high in sugar and the flour coating catches quickly. Medium heat, not high, and turn once; browning takes three or four minutes a side.
- YieldThe original gives no quantities; as a working guide, two pounds of parsnips, roughly six medium roots, will serve about four either way.
Parsnips were a European kitchen staple long before the potato displaced them, valued because they keep in the ground through winter and sweeten as starch converts to sugar in the cold. Field lore has long held that parsnips are best after frost, and the chemistry bears that out. Their appearance here, treated plainly and twice over, reflects the working purpose of Mrs. Wilson's book: she wrote as a newspaper food columnist in Philadelphia during and after the First World War, when household economy and the full use of cheap root vegetables were the point of the exercise. The instruction to mash and fry into cakes is the same thrift logic applied to potatoes -- the recipe simply says the parsnips 'can be mashed as potatoes' and leaves the rest to the cook.