Skip to main content
Main

Fried Salsify

Fried salsify is boiled and then pan‑fried with salt, pepper, sugar, flour, and drippings.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 ingredients
Jump to recipe ↓

Why it works: Sugar and flour are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 15% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 92,116 recipes. Both carry phenylacetaldehyde, which smells hawthorne, honey. The science ↓

Fried Salsify

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Scrape the salsify roots.

  2. Boil the salsify roots until tender.

  3. Drain the salsify.

Fry and serve

  1. Dust the salsify with salt, pepper, sugar, and flour.

  2. Heat the drippings in a frying pan.

  3. Add the salsify to the hot pan.

  4. Turn carefully until browned on all sides.

  5. Serve with baked or hot boiled ham.

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. Sugar + flourtop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together92,116 recipes

    Shared aroma: phenylacetaldehyde (hawthorne, honey).

  2. Pepper + flourtop 19% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together50,459 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  3. Pepper + sugartop 32% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together19,401 recipes

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

Pepper and sugar barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 19,401 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 roots
Form the main body of the dish; boiling softens them so they can be fried.
Flour
Forms a light coating that helps the salsify brown in the hot fat.
Drippings
Conduct heat in the frying pan and add rich flavour as they brown the salsify.
Sugar
Adds sweetness and promotes browning on the outside of the salsify.

The step that matters

Turning carefully until browned on all sides. The flour coating and sugar brown quickly in hot fat, and the salsify is already tender and fragile after boiling. Rough handling can break the pieces apart, so turn them gently and let each side set before moving them.

“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.

More fried salsify recipes

Cakes 6 See all 30 →

You might also like

Tomato SoupTomato Soup526 recipesBrown BreadBrown Bread461 recipesMutton BrothMutton Broth292 recipesYorkshire PuddingYorkshire Pudding264 recipes