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Salsify with Brown Sauce, Spanish Style

A dish of cooked salsify served with butter, veal gravy, ham essence, and parsley.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 5 ingredients
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Why it works: Butter and parsley are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 15% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 28,563 recipes. Both carry trans-2-hexenal, which smells green, leafy. The science ↓

Salsify with Brown Sauce, Spanish Style

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Prepare and cook the salsify as directed in recipe No. 1370.

  2. Drain the salsify and place it in a flat saucepan with butter.

Brown and sauce

  1. Toss over medium heat until lightly browned.

  2. Add thickened veal gravy and a few drops of essence of ham, then toss again for a few minutes.

  3. Stir in finely chopped parsley and serve hot.

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. Butter + parsleytop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together28,563 recipes

    Shared aroma: trans-2-hexenal (green, leafy).

  2. Veal + hamtop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together3,264 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2,4-decadienal (seaweed).

  3. Butter + hamtop 16% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together5,475 recipes

    Shared aroma: trans-2-decenal (waxy, orange).

  4. Veal + parsleytop 17% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together4,766 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2,4-decadienal (seaweed).

  5. Butter + vealtop 23% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together9,381 recipes

    Shared aroma: 3-hexenal (apple, fruity).

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

What each ingredient does

Butter
Adds fat and flavour, and helps the salsify brown lightly in the pan.
Thickened veal gravy
Supplies body and savoury flavour to coat the salsify as a brown sauce.
Essence of ham
Adds a concentrated smoky, savoury aroma to the sauce.

The step that matters

Browning the salsify in butter. Tossing over medium heat until lightly browned, rather than burning it, builds flavour through browning reactions while keeping the butter from turning bitter. Drain the salsify well first so it browns instead of steaming.

Swap the parsley

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (butter, veal, ham):

  1. Parsleythe original
  2. Capersfits about as well
  3. Sagefits about as well
  4. Thymefits less well

Fit is the average pairing score against butter, veal, ham. Candidates are from the same food group and used in at least 100 recipes.

“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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