Carrots
Carrots, one of the staples in German households, are cooked by the German housewife in stock. In boiling them, just enough stock or water should be used to keep them from sticking to the pan, and they should be covered closely. Forty-five minutes will be needed for new ones, and longer for old. They should be cooked until they can be pierced easily with a fork. If water is used for cooking them, a tablespoonful of butter can be added to the water when they are about half done, or they can be drained dry and sauted in butter. They should be served in a white sauce made of one cupful of milk and cream, one tablespoonful of butter, the same amount of flour, and salt and paprika to taste. They are a pleasant addition to green peas, and can be added to them in thin strips or tiny cubes, or they can be scooped out and made into cups in which to serve the peas. In the latter case, the cups should be sent to the table with a garnish of parsley or water cress.
A method rather than a fixed formula: carrots braised in stock, finished in butter, and dressed with a simple white sauce. Two details in the original need translating before you start.
- The 45-minute timingThe recipe gives forty-five minutes for new carrots and longer for old, which assumes whole roots. Whole young carrots take 15-20 minutes covered in a shallow pan; sliced or cubed, 8-12. Cook to the fork test the recipe gives, not the clock.
- "One cupful of milk and cream"This is genuinely ambiguous — it may mean a cup of the two combined in unstated proportion, or a cup of each. One cup total, half milk and half cream, gives a sauce of the right consistency for the tablespoon each of butter and flour specified.
- The sauce is a small bechamelMelt the butter, stir in the flour, cook a minute or two without colouring, then add the liquid gradually. A tablespoon of each to a cup of liquid is a thin to medium sauce, meant to coat rather than cling.
- Paprika, not pepperPaprika in American cookbooks of this period generally means the sweet Hungarian kind, used as much for the pink blush it gives a white sauce as for flavour. Modern smoked paprika would be out of place here.
- Braising with very little liquidThe instruction to use only enough stock to keep them from sticking, tightly covered, is the point of the method — the carrots steam in their own moisture and concentrate rather than leaching into a pot of water. Use a heavy pan with a well-fitting lid and check it does not run dry.
- The carrot cupsScooping cups calls for thick, blunt carrots, cut in short lengths and hollowed with the small end of a melon baller while still raw, then cooked gently so they hold their shape. Thin supermarket carrots will not give you enough wall.
- YieldNo quantity is given. Reckon 1 to 1 1/2 lb of carrots and the full cup of sauce for four as a side dish.
Braising in stock under a tight lid is an older European technique, and a white sauce finish was a common nineteenth-century way of making a boiled vegetable presentable at table. The pairing with green peas, and the fussier business of hollowing carrots into cups to hold them, fit the same period's taste for garnish and colour contrast on the plate.