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Parsnip Fritters
Wash parsnips and cook forty-five minutes in boiling salted water. Drain, plunge into cold water, when skins will be found to slip off easily. Mash, season with butter, salt, and pepper, shape in small flat round cakes, roll in flour, and sauté in butter.
A short, self-explanatory recipe whose success rests almost entirely on how dry the mashed parsnip is before it goes into the pan.
- Cook whole, peel afterThe instruction to boil the roots unpeeled and slip the skins off under cold water is the point of the method: it keeps the flesh from waterlogging. Forty-five minutes suits large winter parsnips; young ones may be tender in 20-25 minutes, so test with a skewer.
- Dry the mashDrained parsnip holds a great deal of water, and wet mash will spread in the pan and stick. Return the mashed root to the dry hot pan for a minute or two, stirring, until it stiffens before seasoning.
- Woody coresOlder parsnips often have a fibrous core that will not mash smooth. Halve them lengthwise after peeling and pull or cut it out, or push the mash through a sieve or ricer.
- Butter and seasoningAbout 1-2 tablespoons butter per pound of cooked parsnip. Parsnip is sweet, so it takes more salt and pepper than you expect; taste the mash before shaping.
- ShapingCakes of roughly 2 inches across and half an inch thick hold together best. Chilling the shaped cakes for 20-30 minutes firms them and makes them far easier to turn.
- SautéingButter alone browns fast; a spoonful of neutral oil with it lets you hold a medium heat. Cook 3-4 minutes a side until well browned, and turn once only.
- YieldTwo pounds of parsnips gives a dozen or so cakes, enough for four as a side dish. Serve with roast meat or ham.
Parsnips were a staple sweet root in New England kitchens long before the potato dominated the winter cellar, and they were valued for improving after a frost, which converts some of the starch to sugar; crops were often left in the ground over winter and dug in early spring. Frying leftover or freshly boiled root vegetables into small cakes was standard thrift cookery, and the book applies broadly similar croquette and cake treatments to hominy, rice and salt codfish elsewhere in its pages. The plain use of "sauté" in a vegetable recipe is consistent with the book's concern to give household cooks a codified, largely French-derived vocabulary of technique rather than leaving them to guess what "fry" meant.