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Mashed Yellow Turnips
Pare and cut turnips into small pieces; cover with boiling water and boil in uncovered saucepan until tender. Drain, mash and add salt, a little white pepper and melted butter.
A four-line recipe that depends almost entirely on knowing which root is meant and how long it actually takes. The rest is seasoning to taste.
- "Yellow turnip" means rutabagaIn American books of this period the yellow turnip is the swede or rutabaga — the large root with purple shoulders and dense yellow-orange flesh, not the small white-and-purple turnip. It is firmer and sweeter, and generally needs considerably longer cooking.
- Peel deeplySupermarket rutabaga is usually coated in food-grade wax, and the layer beneath the skin is fibrous. Cut off the top and bottom, stand the root on a flat end and take the peel off in slabs with a knife rather than a vegetable peeler.
- TimingCut into 1-inch pieces, expect 25 to 35 minutes at a steady boil. The test is a knife sliding in with no resistance at the centre; underdone rutabaga mashes into strings rather than a purée.
- Why the pan is left uncoveredBrassica roots release sulphur compounds as they cook, and an open pan lets them escape instead of condensing back into the water. It is the one instruction here that is doing real work, and it is worth following.
- Drain hardRutabaga holds a great deal of water. After draining, return it to the dry hot pan over low heat for a minute or two and let the steam go off, or the mash will be soupy no matter how much butter goes in.
- Butter and seasoningThe recipe gives no quantity; 2 to 3 tablespoons of butter per pound of prepared root is a reasonable starting point. White pepper is specified largely so it does not show in a pale mash; black pepper can be substituted, though it tastes somewhat different and shows as flecks.
- YieldA 2-lb rutabaga yields roughly 1½ lb once trimmed and deeply peeled, enough for about four as a side dish.
Rutabaga reached American kitchens by way of northern Europe, where it had long been valued less as a delicacy than as a root that keeps in a cellar from autumn until spring without rotting. Cookbooks of the early twentieth century, this one included, treat it as basic winter provisioning: pared, boiled, mashed, buttered, and set beside a roast without comment. The absence of any quantity in the recipe is characteristic of the genre. Its reputation as plain fare has stuck; rutabaga is generally traced to a cross between cabbage and turnip, and it inherited the humble standing of both.