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Mashed Yellow Turnips
Peel and cut in pieces two medium, sound yellow turnips, thoroughly wash, place in saucepan, and pour in water until one inch higher than the turnips. Season with teaspoon salt, adding half ounce butter, cover pan and slowly boil for one hour. Drain on sieve, then press through potato masher into a saucepan, add an ounce butter, a half teaspoon salt, three saltspoons pepper, and stir well on fire with wooden spoon for three minutes. Dress on a vegetable dish, smooth surface to dome shape with a knife blade and serve.
A straightforward vegetable side, but two things need translating: what "yellow turnip" means and what a saltspoon holds.
- Yellow turnip is rutabagaIn American cookbooks of this era "yellow turnip" means what is sold now as rutabaga or swede — the dense, purple-shouldered root with orange-yellow flesh. Two medium ones are roughly 2 to 2½ lb trimmed, enough for four to six.
- SaltspoonA saltspoon is usually reckoned a quarter teaspoon, so three saltspoons is about ¾ teaspoon of pepper. That is assertive but deliberate; rutabaga takes pepper well.
- Half ounce, one ounce butterOne tablespoon in the cooking water, two tablespoons stirred into the mash. Weighing is easier than guessing: 15 g and 30 g.
- The hour is not excessiveRutabaga is far denser than a white turnip and genuinely wants 45 minutes to an hour at a slow boil to mash smoothly. Test with a knife tip rather than the clock — pieces should offer no resistance at all.
- Drain hardThe hinge of the dish. Rutabaga holds a great deal of water, and a wet mash will slump on the plate. Leave it on the sieve several minutes, then use the three minutes of stirring over heat to drive off steam rather than merely to warm it.
- Potato masher, not a processor"Press through a potato masher" here may mean the ricer-style press as much as the modern grid masher; either works. A food processor can leave rutabaga gluey.
- ServingInstructions to dress a vegetable into a dome with a knife blade appear in cookbooks of this period. It also helps the mash hold its shape rather than spreading.
The rutabaga reached American and British kitchens by way of northern Europe — it is generally traced to a cross between cabbage and turnip, and the English name "swede" is short for "Swedish turnip," recording its arrival from Sweden. Nineteenth-century American cookbooks often filed it under turnips, distinguishing the two largely by colour: white turnip and yellow turnip. Its place in a book called The International Cook Book, among far grander dishes, reflects the era's habit of setting down the plainest vegetable preparations with the same precision as a sauce — the weighed butter, the counted saltspoons, the specified three minutes of stirring. Cheap and storable through winter, mashed yellow turnip appears in period cookbooks as a cold-weather side, served alongside boiled or roast meats.