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Fried Oyster Plant

Fried oyster plant is a dish of mashed salsify roots mixed with milk, butter, eggs, dredged in flour and fried.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 5 ingredients
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Why it works: Milk and butter are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 7% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 81,283 recipes. Both carry (z)-4-heptenal, which smells biscuit, cream. The science ↓

Fried Oyster Plant

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the salsify

  1. Scrape the salsify roots.

  2. Boil them whole until tender.

  3. Drain and let cool.

  4. Mash with a wooden spoon until smooth, removing all fibers.

Make the cakes

  1. Moisten the mash with milk.

  2. Add 1 tablespoon of butter.

  3. Add 1½ beaten eggs for every cup of salsify.

  4. Form the mixture into round cakes.

  5. Dredge the cakes with flour.

Fry

  1. Fry the cakes until brown.

Recipe from a historical cookbook (Internet Archive).

Transcribed from a scanned cookbook and modernised for today's kitchens. Where the book gave no heat or time, or said "a moderate oven", the temperatures and times here may be modern equivalents rather than the book's own figures.

Explore the science

The flavor team

The pairs that carry this dish. Each one is judged two ways: how much their aromas overlap, and how often cooks already put them together.

  1. Milk + buttertop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together81,283 recipes

    Shared aroma: (z)-4-heptenal (biscuit, cream).

  2. Butter + flourtop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together124,287 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  3. Oyster + buttertop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together8,184 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2,6-nonadienal (cucumber, green).

  4. Oyster + eggtop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together4,103 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-nonenal (fatty, green).

  5. Milk + flourtop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together78,219 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

Butter and flour barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 124,287 recipes: they work on texture and structure more than aroma.

Ranks compare each pair with 20,000 random ingredient pairs on CompKitchen. How we score pairs

What each ingredient does

Salsify
Forms the base of the cakes, giving them their bulk and mild flavor.
Eggs
Bind the mash together so the cakes hold their shape while frying.
Milk
Adds moisture to the mash, keeping the cakes soft inside.
Butter
Adds richness and fat, which helps the outside brown during frying.
Flour
Forms a dry coating that browns in the hot fat and gives a crisp crust.

The step that matters

Removing all fibers from the mash. Fibers left in the cooked salsify stay stringy and make the mash coarse, so the cakes lose their smooth texture. Mashing until smooth and removing them keeps the texture even.

“What each ingredient does” and “The step that matters” were written by Claude from this recipe’s own method and reviewed in samples by CompKitchen.

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