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Fried Oyster Plant

Fried oyster plant cakes are made from boiled oyster plant roots mashed into a paste, mixed with milk, butter, eggs, and flour, then 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 roots

  1. Scrape the oyster plant roots and boil them whole until tender.

  2. Drain and let them cool, then mash with a wooden spoon to a smooth paste, removing all fibers.

Make and fry the cakes

  1. Moisten the paste with milk and add 2 tablespoons of butter and 1½ beaten eggs for every cup of salsify.

  2. Form the mixture into round cakes, dredge with flour, and fry 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

Oyster plant roots
Provide the bulk and mild, sweet flavour of the cakes once mashed into a paste.
Eggs
Bind the mashed paste so the cakes hold their round shape while frying.
Butter
Adds richness and fat, helping the cakes brown and carry flavour.
Milk
Moistens the paste so it becomes soft enough to shape into cakes.
Flour
Forms a dry coating on the outside that browns during frying.

The step that matters

Removing all fibers from the mashed paste. Fibers left in the mashed roots make the paste stringy and uneven, and they can stop the cakes from holding together and frying evenly.

“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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