No. 2849

Teltow Turnips with Chestnuts

Navets de Teltow aux Marrons

Scrape and throw the turnips into tepid water, then plunge into boiling salted water placed in a well-tinned saucepan; boil over a moderate fire, and when done drain and put them back into a saucepan with a piece of butter and a little sugar; toss for a few moments, and moisten with broth (No. 194a); season and thicken with a little butter, into which stir some flour slightly browned in the oven; reduce to a short sauce, then pour into a vegetable dish; spread them over to form a hollow in the center to be filled with whole chestnuts cooked in broth (No. 2727).

EGGS (Œufs).

← No. 2848 Turnips. with Spanish, Bechamel or Allemande Carrots, Beets & Root Vegetables No. 2850 Eggs →

For the Modern Kitchen

A two-part garnish dish: glazed turnips ringed around a mound of braised chestnuts. Ranhofer's cross-references do the heavy lifting, so the main work is reconstructing them.

Teltow turnipsA small, dense, sweet German turnip from the sandy soil around Teltow, near Berlin, rarely seen outside Germany and almost never fresh in the United States. Substitute the smallest young white turnips you can find, or Tokyo/hakurei turnips, and expect a slightly milder, wetter result.
The well-tinned saucepanAn instruction about copper, not cleanliness. Bare copper discolours turnips and reacts with acid; any modern stainless or enamelled pan makes the caution moot.
Broth No. 194aA cross-reference to one of Ranhofer's broths; the recipe itself is not on this page, so treat it as a light, unsalted stock. Unsalted chicken or veal stock stands in directly. Keep it light — the finished sauce is meant to glaze, not to taste of brown gravy.
Chestnuts, No. 2727Whole chestnuts peeled of both shell and inner skin, then simmered gently in broth until tender but unbroken, roughly 25-35 minutes. Vacuum-packed cooked chestnuts warmed through in stock are an honest shortcut; they break less than fresh ones.
The browned flourRanhofer gives no temperature; flour spread on a sheet and toasted in a moderate oven until pale tan, then worked into softened butter. It thickens less than raw flour and adds colour and a nutty note; do not let it go dark brown or the sauce turns bitter.
Cooking timeSmall turnips need 8-12 minutes in boiling salted water — just tender to a knife tip. Any longer and they collapse when tossed with butter and sugar. The second cooking in broth should be brief, mostly reduction.
"Reduce to a short sauce"Boil until the liquid clings to the turnips as a glaze rather than pooling. This is the hinge of the dish: too much liquid and the chestnut mound sits in soup, too little and the sugar catches and burns.
Yield and serviceRanhofer gives no quantities; roughly 1.5 lb of turnips and 1 lb of chestnuts will serve six as a side. A garnish of this kind would suit roast game, goose, duck or braised beef, and it is best assembled at the last minute so the ring holds its shape.

A Little History

Teltow turnips (Teltower Rübchen) were a genuine luxury vegetable of the nineteenth century, prized for the concentrated sweetness the poor sandy soil of the Teltow district south of Berlin forced into them; they are often said to have been a favourite of Goethe, who is traditionally reported to have had them sent to Weimar. Charles Ranhofer, chef at Delmonico's, included them in The Epicurean (1894) among dozens of French-titled root preparations because a New York restaurant of that rank was expected to stock European specialities by name, whether or not the average reader could obtain them. The pairing with chestnuts is thoroughly of its period — both are cold-weather sweet starches, both were standard garnishes for roast game and poultry, and the composed arrangement of one ringing the other reflects the service à la russe plating that had by then displaced the older practice of setting everything on the table at once.