Today's Case:
Morrison's Rutabagas
Re: Morrison's rutabagas
From: Mail RR
To: Phaedrus
Date: 5/24/2025, 1:27 PM
On 5/23/2025 6:48 PM, Mail RR wrote:
Do you by chance have the rutabaga recipe from Morrisons Cafeteria?
Thank you for your time.
Hello "Mail RR,"
Next time please sign your first name to your request.
There is no rutabaga recipe in my copy of the Morrison's Kitchen Manual, and the only mention of them that I could find on the web is a brief one in an article about "the Last Morrison's Cafeteria in Mobile, Alabama" here:
https://www.al.com/life/2025/03/theres-one-morrisons-cafeteria-left-in-the-country-and-you-can-find-it-in-alabama.html
So, I asked my friend who was a Morrison's manager back in the day. He had a recipe from way back when Morrison's made their rutabaga dish from fresh rutabagas, but it seems that, as soon as canned rutabagas became available, they switched to canned food service rutabagas. It's too difficult to cook fresh rutabagas.
Here's what he said:
Re: rutabagas?
From: jim
Date: 5/24/2025, 9:57 AM
To: Phaedrus
On Sat, May 24, 2025 at 8:55 AM james wrote:
Yes. The recipe is under vegetables, but whoever wants this is going to be
disappointed. Morrison's went to canned rutabagas for a good reason.
Rutabagas are hard as a rock and the dull knives in the kitchen slipped and
caused injuries. Also, they had to be peeled and are very time consuming to
prep and sometimes difficult to obtain. A little bacon stock, a touch of sugar
and a scant bit of white pepper, heat them up and you were good.
The from scratch recipe in the manual is 5 lbs of rutabagas. Clean and dice
in 1/2 inch cubes and boil in one gallon of bacon stock until tender, about
30 minutes after stock comes to boil. Add one ounce bacon base, 1 1/2 tbsp
sugar and 1/2 tsp. white pepper. The recipe also called for parboiling rutabagas
before peeling, which nobody did. They could also be mashed, but this wasn't
popular.There is also a note that they can not be used the next day.
The yield was only 15 servings at 1/2 cup or 13 servings mashed.
Hope you are doing well!
JAMES
So, "Mail RR", the closest that you're going to get to a recipe for Morrison's rutabagas as served before they closed appears to be:
1. Use canned rutabagas. The "from scratch" recipe for 5 lbs of rutabagas is above.
2. Add a little bacon stock, a touch of sugar, a scant bit of white pepper and heat them up.
Phaed
