HFF 5.8: Literary Food

 

The Challenge:  Literary Food. Make a dish mentioned in a novel, story or song.

I encountered the aphorism "Fine words butter no parsnips" in Vanity Fair (1848), and thought it too amusing to ignore--especially when I had a garden full of parsnips to cook up. It shows up in a smattering of other sources (like so), variously phrased by always referring to parsnips with butter. The cookbooks bear this out as the standard method of serving parsnips: 

"They are boiled and otherwise treated exactly as carrots. Melted butter is their usual accompaniment." (2500 Practical Receipts, 1837)

The Recipe: Parsnips/ Mashed Parsnips from Good Plain Cookery (1882) by Mary Hooper

PARSNIPS. These are usually served boiled plainly like carrots; they take from two to three hours to boil. Mashed, as in the following recipe, parsnips are excellent .

MASHED PARSNIPS. Wash and scrape a large parsnip, cut it into eight lengths and having divided them in half, put them into a quart of boiling water with a teaspoonful of salt and an ounce of good dripping. Boil the parsnip until perfectly tender; it will take about two hours to cook. Take it up, drain, and press the parsnip in a colander to get out as much moisture as possible, and with a wooden spoon mash it quite smooth, and then put it in a clean stewpan with an ounce of fresh butter, or a tablespoonful of milk and cream, add salt and pepper, and stir the parsnip over the fire for five minutes, and take care to serve hot.

The Date/Year and Region: British, 1882

How Did You Make It: Both ways. I started by peeling and slicing one of the large parsnips from my garden, then put it on to boil. I added the salt, but forgot to collect the drippings in time. I found that after 1 1/4 hour, the parsnip pieces were soft enough they were nearly falling apart, so I drained them. I set seven pieces aside, and mashed the rest with 2 Tbsp unsalted butter, and a dash of salt and pepper. I put the mashed parsnips back on the stove, stirring on med-low heat for another ~3 minutes. I melted 1 more Tbsp of butter to pour over the unmashed pieces.

Time to Complete: ~90 minutes

Total Cost: Used ~25 cents worth of butter, parsnip was homegrown

How Successful Was It?: Very tasty. The mashed parsnip had the texture of a well-mashed potato, and the incorporated butter really cut the sharp parsnip taste. The boiled parsnip was also good, and the parsnip's sharp flavor came through more clearly. I didn't put salt and pepper on the non-mashed parsnips, and comparing between the two, I think the salt and pepper is a pleasant addition, though not strictly necessary.

I've made the mashed parsnips twice more (having a ton of parsnips to use), and while neither time needed the full 2 hours to boil, the parsnips definitely work best when they are thoroughly softened before mashing. Thirty minutes isn't quite enough, but with small pieces the parsnips can definitely be cooked through in under an hour. 

How Accurate Is It?:  Other than forgetting the dripping, I thought this went fairly true to the recipe. I confess to using the microwave to quickly melt one tablespoon of butter. I grew heirloom parsnips this year in order to try cooking with them, and this is tasty enough that I plan to continue growing them next year as well.

The hollow crown parsnips are supposed to date
to the 1820s, not sure of a date on the turga parsnips.

Parsnips boiled and mashed.