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Diced Turnips
Pare, slice, cut in dice an inch square, boil till nearly done, in as little water as possible; to one quart of turnips, add one table-spoon sugar, salt to make it palatable; when they are boiled as dry as possible, add two or three spoons of cream and a beaten egg, and serve. Excellent.
A plain nineteenth-century turnip dish that finishes with a cream-and-egg liaison rather than a flour sauce. The whole thing hinges on the last thirty seconds.
- The egg is the hingeBeat the egg with the cream first, pull the pan off the heat, then stir the mixture through the hot turnips. Returning the pan to direct heat curdles the egg into threads instead of glossing the vegetable.
- "One quart of turnips"A quart measured as diced cubes is roughly 1.25 to 1.5 lb of pared turnip, or two medium purple-top turnips. That serves four as a side.
- Dice sizeAn inch is larger than most cooks would cut today and gives about 12-15 minutes in simmering water. Half-inch dice cook in 8 and hold their shape better once the cream goes in.
- "As little water as possible"Less water means less to drive off later, and turnips leach flavour into the cooking water; any liquid left behind will thin the cream. Use an inch of water in a lidded pan, or steam them.
- "Boiled as dry as possible"Drain, then return the pan to low heat for a minute to drive off the surface moisture before adding the dairy. Wet turnips make a watery sauce.
- The sugarA tablespoon per quart reads as a lot, but turnips are sharp. Start with two teaspoons and taste; young spring turnips may need none.
- CreamNineteenth-century "cream" was skimmed from the top of the milk and varied in richness; heavy or double cream is the nearest modern equivalent. Half-and-half or milk will work but is more likely to break when the egg goes in.
- SeasoningSalt to taste, and a good deal of black pepper and a scrape of nutmeg are conventional additions that the book leaves unsaid.
Turnips were a common winter root in nineteenth-century American cookery, and a book like The Dixie Cook-Book (1883) treats them as unremarkable enough to need only four lines. The finish here — cream slackened with a beaten egg, stirred in off the fire — is a household simplification of the French liaison, and similar finishes turn up in period recipes for creamed onions, salsify and green peas. The tablespoon of sugar is worth noting: sweetening a sharp root vegetable to soften its bite was a familiar habit, though how much more pungent the older turnip varieties were is not well documented. The single-word verdict at the end, "Excellent," is a familiar feature of compiled cookbooks of the era.