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Parsnip Fritters
Peel and boil some parsnips until tender, then drain them thoroughly, mash them smoothly, mixing in with them two beaten eggs, salt to taste, and sufficient flour to bind them stiffly. Divide and mould the mixture into small round cakes with floured hands. Put a large piece of butter into a stewpan, place it on the fire and let it boil, then put in the cakes, and fry them a light golden brown. Drain, pile them on a hot dish, over which has been spread a folded napkin, or an ornamental dish-paper, garnish with fried parsley, and serve.
A straightforward vegetable fritter, but the original leaves quantities entirely to judgment. The whole thing hinges on getting the parsnips dry.
- QuantitiesTwo eggs will bind roughly 2 lb of parsnips, giving about 12 small cakes to serve four. Flour is deliberately unmeasured; expect 1/4 to 1/2 cup depending on how wet the mash is.
- Drain them properlyThis is the step that decides whether the cakes hold. Parsnips hold a great deal of water, so after draining return them to the dry pan over low heat for a minute or two to steam off, then mash. A wet mash needs so much flour that the fritters turn pasty.
- Fibrous coresOlder, thicker parsnips have a woody central core that will not mash smooth. Quarter them lengthwise and cut it out before boiling, or press the cooked mash through a ricer or sieve.
- StewpanIn this period a stewpan is generally a broad pan with fairly straight sides, a handle and usually a lid; a heavy skillet will stand in for it here. "A large piece of butter" means enough to shallow-fry in, perhaps 4 tablespoons for a batch.
- Let the butter boilThe boiling is the butter's water driving off; once the foaming subsides the fat is hot enough to fry. Whole butter browns fast at that point, so clarified butter, or butter cut with a spoonful of neutral oil, holds up better across two batches.
- Chill before fryingNot in the original, but the mixture handles far better after 20 minutes in the refrigerator. Warm mash spreads in the pan.
- Fried parsleyDry the sprigs completely and drop them into the hot fat for 10 to 15 seconds only. Wet parsley spits violently, and much beyond a quarter minute turns it black.
- The napkinFrying was drained onto folded linen or a pierced paper doily at table. Paper towel does the same work; the napkin was presentation, not technique.
Parsnips were a staple sweetener and starch in Europe long before the potato displaced them, and they survived in nineteenth-century American cookery mainly as a boiled winter root, often left in the ground through a frost or two to convert starch to sugar. Fritters of this kind, mashed vegetable bound with egg and fried in cakes, were a standard way of returning yesterday's boiled vegetable to the table as something worth serving, and salsify, corn and hominy got the same treatment. The dish appears in Oscar Tschirky's book, served with the folded napkin, the dish-paper and the fried parsley garnish that were standard service conventions of the period, dressing a plain root vegetable for the dining room.