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Kohl-Rabi
Peel turnip-shaped globe; cut into small pieces; boil until tender, 30 to 35 minutes. Add one teaspoon salt to each quart water. Serve plain with melted butter and pepper, or with cream sauce.
The leaves may be stemmed and cooked as greens, boiling at least 40 minutes.
A plain boiled vegetable treatment that needs only one real correction: the times are far longer than current practice.
- Cut the boiling timeThirty to thirty-five minutes turns diced kohlrabi to mush. Pieces of about half an inch are tender in 10 to 15 minutes; test with a knife tip rather than a clock. The longer time may reflect larger, older, woodier bulbs than most markets now sell.
- The leavesForty minutes destroys them. Stemmed kohlrabi greens behave like collards or turnip tops and want 8 to 15 minutes in boiling water, or a few minutes in a covered pan with the water clinging to the leaves.
- Peel deeplyKohlrabi has a fibrous layer under the skin that stays stringy no matter how long it cooks. Take off the outer rind and everything tough beneath it, which on a large bulb can mean a quarter-inch. Bulbs over about 3 inches across are usually woody at the core as well.
- Salt ratioA teaspoon to a quart of water is roughly 0.6 percent by weight, a light but sensible seasoning for the cooking water and worth keeping.
- Cream sauceThe recipe gives no formula. A standard white sauce of the period -- 2 tablespoons butter, 2 tablespoons flour cooked out for a minute or two, then a cup of milk -- will do. A grating of nutmeg suits kohlrabi well.
- YieldNo quantity is given. Two medium bulbs, about 1 pound trimmed, serve three or four as a side dish.
Kohlrabi is Brassica oleracea in its swollen-stem form, a sibling of cabbage, broccoli and kale rather than any kind of turnip, though the name says otherwise: German Kohl (cabbage) plus Rabi, from the Latin for turnip. The instruction here to peel the "turnip-shaped globe" is doing the work of description for a reader who may never have seen one. The Royal Cook Book was issued by a baking powder manufacturer, and its vegetable chapter consists of short, unbranded, encyclopedic entries of the kind found in a general kitchen reference rather than a leaflet.