No. 2848

Turnips. with Spanish, Bechamel or Allemande Sauce

Navets a la Sauce Espagnole a la sauce Bechamel ou a la sauce Allemande

Trim some turnips into seven-eights of an inch balls, or in the shape of crescents, olives or cloves of garlic; blanch in salted water, drain and saute them colorless in butter, seasoning with salt and sugar; drain off the butter, lay them in a saucepan, and moisten with gravy (No. 404) and espagnole sauce (No. 414), finishing to cook quite slowly. The espagnole sauce can be replaced by bechamel sauce and cream (No. 411), or else allemande sauce (No. 407) and broth (No. 194a), finishing with chicken glaze (No. 398) and fresh butter.

← No. 2847 Turnips Glazed Carrots, Beets & Root Vegetables No. 2849 Teltow Turnips with Chestnuts →

For the Modern Kitchen

A side dish built out of Ranhofer's cross-referenced sauce system: the turnips themselves take ten minutes, and the work is in whichever sauce you choose. Any decent brown sauce, béchamel or velouté-with-egg-yolk will stand in for the numbered originals.

The hinge: sauté colorless"Saute them colorless" means cook in butter over moderate heat without letting them take on any browning, so the finished dish stays pale and the sauce does the work. Once the turnips catch color the sugar in the pan will carry it further and you have glazed turnips (No. 2847) instead.
Cutting to shapeSeven-eighths of an inch is about 2.2 cm — a good deal larger than a marble. The crescents, olives and "cloves of garlic" are all turned shapes cut with a small paring knife; uniformity matters more than the exact profile, because these are cooked to a single point of doneness.
The sauce substitutionsEspagnole is a brown sauce built on brown roux and veal stock; béchamel is milk-based; allemande is a velouté thickened with egg yolk and lemon. Modern equivalents: a good reduced brown gravy or demi-glace, a light béchamel loosened with cream, or a chicken velouté finished off the heat with yolk.
Gravy and brothNo. 404 is Ranhofer's gravy (a meat jus) and No. 194a his broth, in effect a plain unthickened stock. Use unsalted stock, since the turnips are already salted and the sauce will reduce.
Chicken glazeNo. 398 is chicken stock reduced to a syrup. A tablespoon of reduced stock or commercial glace de volaille does the job; without it, reduce a half cup of stock to a spoonful before finishing with cold butter off the heat.
Sugar is seasoning, not sweeteningA pinch counters the mustardy bitterness that turnips carry, especially larger winter ones. Small young turnips need very little.
TimingBlanch two to three minutes in salted water, sauté four or five, then simmer in the sauce at a bare tremble until a knife slides in with no resistance — usually eight to twelve minutes. Turnips collapse into mush quickly once cooked, so check early.
YieldNo quantity is given. Reckon about 1 lb of trimmed turnip and a cup of sauce for four as a side dish; trimming into balls wastes roughly a third, so buy 1½ lb.

A Little History

The Epicurean (1894) is Charles Ranhofer's record of some thirty years as chef at Delmonico's in New York, and this entry shows how the book is built: rather than repeating a sauce, Ranhofer numbers it once and sends you back to it, so a single vegetable garnish can appear in three registers — brown, white, or yolk-thickened — depending on what it accompanies. Turnips shaped into balls, olives and crescents belong to the French garnishing tradition Ranhofer trained in before emigrating, in which the cut given to a vegetable was often tied to a particular preparation. The pairing of turnip with a little sugar and a meat glaze is older than the restaurant kitchen; the root's slight bitterness has generally been managed that way in French cooking, and the same logic underlies navets glacés and the turnips traditionally served with duck.