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Glazed Turnips, Demi-Glace
Peel twelve small, white turnips, then cut them in quarters lengthwise. Round each piece into bean-of-garlic-like shape, place in a small saucepan with half an ounce butter, a teaspoon sugar, half a teaspoon salt and two saltspoons pepper. Moisten with two gills of broth and let reduce to half the quantity, then pour in one gill of demi-glace, lightly mix. Cover the pan and set in the oven thirty-five minutes. Remove, dress on a hot, deep dish and serve.
A straightforward braise-and-glaze, but the original assumes you keep demi-glace on hand and know what a saltspoon holds. The measurements convert cleanly.
- Gills and saltspoonsA gill is half a cup, so two gills of broth is 1 cup and one gill of demi-glace is 1/2 cup. A saltspoon is a quarter teaspoon, making "two saltspoons pepper" about 1/2 teaspoon — assertive but in keeping with the sweet-savory balance here.
- "Bean-of-garlic-like shape"An awkward rendering of the French kitchen term for shaping vegetables en gousse d'ail, i.e. like a clove of garlic: each quarter pared smooth and tapered at the ends, a form of turning. It is cosmetic, but it also makes the pieces cook evenly; if you skip it, cut uniform wedges instead.
- Oven heatNo temperature or oven term is given in the recipe at all. A moderate oven, around 350F, suits thirty-five minutes; the liquid should stay at a bare simmer, not boil down to scorching.
- Demi-glaceBrown veal stock reduced with sauce espagnole to a syrupy, gelatinous concentrate. Good jarred or frozen demi-glace works; so does 1/2 cup of well-reduced brown stock. Powdered "demi-glace" bases are heavily salted, so hold back the half teaspoon of salt until the end if you use one.
- The reduction is the hingeReducing the broth by half before the demi-glace goes in is what produces the glaze rather than a stew. Do this uncovered on the stovetop over medium heat, then add the demi-glace, cover and transfer to the oven.
- Turnip size and bitternessTwelve small white turnips implies young ones, roughly golf-ball to small-egg size; Tokyo or salad turnips, or spring hakurei, fit the description. Large storage turnips are stronger-flavoured and coarser under this treatment, and may be worth blanching first.
- FinishingIf the sauce is still loose after thirty-five minutes, lift out the turnips and reduce the liquid on the stovetop until it coats a spoon, then roll them back through it.
- YieldTwelve small turnips serve four to six as a side, most naturally with roast beef, braised veal or duck.
Glazed turnips are one of the standard garnishes of French classical cookery — navets glacés, cooked in butter, sugar and stock until the liquid becomes a shining coat — and they turn up alongside duck, mutton and braised beef in the nineteenth-century repertoire. The instruction to shape each piece like a clove of garlic reads as French kitchen usage carried over into English, as does the assumption that a cook has demi-glace to hand. The International Cook Book was compiled by Alexander Filippini, long of Delmonico's in New York, and pages like this one carry the habits of a restaurant kitchen into a domestic book: precise trimming, a named sauce, and no oven temperature at all.