A Traditional Scottish Recipe for Mashed Turnips / Neeps

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Mashed Neeps / Turnips Ingredients

One (or more) large turnip(s) (The vegetable known by Scots as turnip is called swede elsewhere.)
Butter
White Pepper
Salt

Mashed Neeps / Turnips Cooking Method

Cut off the outside of the turnip. Remove the skin to a depth of half an inch (1cm). This ensures the stringy, tough outer parts are not cooked.

Chop the turnip into one-inch (2 cm) cubes.

Boil in plenty of water for about 45 minutes.

Drain of the water and mash the turnips through a colander.

Return the turnips to the pot and warm them with butter, white pepper, and salt to taste.

The Cleikum Club put a little powdered ginger to their mashed turnips, which were studiously chosen of the yellow, sweet, juicy sort, for which Scotland is cele-brated,-that kind which, in our days of semi-barbarism, were served raw, as a delicate whet before dinner, as turnips are in Russia at the present day. Mashed turnips to be eaten with boiled fowl or veal, or the more insipid meats, are considerably improved by the Cleikum season-ing of ginger, which, besides, corrects the flatulent properties of this esculent. Yellow turnips, mashed and eaten with milk, are recommended in scurvy and consumption.
Margaret Dods, The Cook and Housewives Manual, 1829.