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Turnips in Batter
Put one-fourth pound of butter into a stewpan and place it over the fire; when it has melted stir in one tablespoonful of flour and one pint of milk. Season with salt, pepper and a small quantity of sugar, and continue stirring it over the fire until it thickens; then put in one breakfast cupful of boiled turnips, continue stirring the mixture over the fire, and boil it for ten minutes. Cut two slices of bread, trim the crusts and toast them nicely. Butter the toast, cut each piece into quarters, and place them on a hot dish; pour the turnip mixture over them, and serve immediately.
A creamed vegetable served on toast sops — a light supper dish rather than the fritter the title suggests. The proportions are the thing to watch.
- The "batter" is a sauceNothing here is dipped or fried; the batter is a milk sauce in the béchamel family, thinned by modern standards. Expect something closer to a chowder than a coating.
- Butter to flourA quarter pound of butter against one tablespoon of flour will not emulsify into a stable sauce, and the fat will pool on the plate. A roux of equal weights — roughly 1 oz butter to 1 oz flour for a pint of milk — is what actually thickens; the balance of the butter is best treated as optional richness.
- Breakfast cupfulA breakfast cup in period usage runs about 8 to 10 fluid ounces, larger than a teacup. Take it as a generous cup of cooked turnip, diced small or roughly crushed so it suspends in the sauce.
- Which turnipWhite turnips are most likely meant rather than the yellow swede sold as rutabaga, though the recipe does not say. Boil them until fully tender before they go into the sauce — the ten minutes at the end will not soften an underdone root.
- That ten-minute boilA milk sauce held at a rolling boil for ten minutes will catch on the bottom and take on a scorched flavour. Bring it up, then keep it at a bare simmer, stirring, until the turnip is heated through and the sauce coats a spoon — three or four minutes is enough.
- SeasoningThe "small quantity of sugar" probably answers the mustard-oil bitterness of turnip and should stay small — a teaspoon at most. White pepper keeps the sauce from being speckled; a grating of nutmeg is in keeping.
- The toastToast the bread dark and butter it just before serving. Soft toast under a wet sauce collapses into paste within a minute, which is why the recipe insists on serving immediately.
- YieldTwo slices of bread and a pint of milk make two servings as a light supper, or four as a vegetable course alongside a roast.
Oscar Tschirky was never the Waldorf's chef — he was its maître d'hôtel — but his 1896 Cook Book gathered nine hundred-odd pages of what a large American hotel kitchen of the 1890s actually turned out, from terrapin to a dish of turnips on toast. Creamed vegetables poured over buttered toast were a staple of that era's lighter meals: supper, luncheon, the invalid tray, and the meatless day. The toast served the practical purpose a starch always serves under a loose sauce, and the technique appears across the period's cookbooks with asparagus, chipped beef, mushrooms, eggs and, as here, humbler roots. Turnips carried a reputation as plain, even coarse food; the butter, milk and pinch of sugar are doing the work of making them fit for a hotel dining room.