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Creamed Kohlrabi
6 kohlrabies 2 tablespoons butter or savory fat 2 tablespoons flour Salt Paprika 2 cups milk 1 egg-yolk Wash and pare the kohlrabies. Cut into half-inch cubes, drop into boiling water to cover and cook until tender. Just before cooking is completed, add salt, then drain and shake over the fire to dry slightly. Make a white sauce from the flour, fat, milk and seasonings, adding the egg-yolk last, and pour it over the vegetable.
A plain cream sauce over boiled kohlrabi, from an era when the vegetable was more common on American tables than it is now. The only step that can go wrong is the egg yolk.
- The egg yolkAdd it off the heat, and temper it first by whisking a few spoonfuls of the hot sauce into the yolk before returning the mixture to the pan. Returned to a boil, the yolk scrambles and the sauce turns grainy.
- Buying and peelingThe recipe gives only a count, so read it as six small bulbs; large ones would yield far more than 2 cups of sauce can coat. Older bulbs have a woody outer layer under the skin; pare deeply enough to reach the pale, crisp flesh, and discard any bulb that resists the knife at the center.
- Cooking timeHalf-inch cubes are tender in 8 to 12 minutes in boiling salted water. Beyond that they slump and take on a cabbagey smell. The book withholds salt until the end, which is unnecessary; salt the water from the start.
- Drying the cubesThe shake over the fire is the step that keeps the sauce from thinning. Return the drained cubes to the dry hot pan for half a minute until the surface moisture flashes off.
- Savory fatRendered bacon fat, beef dripping or chicken fat, kept on hand in many kitchens. Butter is the closest modern default; dripping gives a heavier, meatier sauce.
- The sauce proportionsTwo tablespoons each of fat and flour to 2 cups milk is a thin sauce, which is what you want for coating. Cook the roux a minute before adding milk so it does not taste pasty.
- PaprikaIn American cookery of this period paprika was used chiefly for color on a pale dish, not for heat. A sweet Hungarian paprika sprinkled at the table is truest to the intent; smoked paprika will dominate.
- YieldServes six as a side dish. The greens, if the bulbs come with them, are good cooked separately like turnip tops rather than added here.