Name: Creamed Salsify
Ingredients: salsify; salt; milk or cream; rice flour or other thickening; butter

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 ↓

Creamed Salsify

Oven, in the book's wordsA quick oven

Ingredients

Directions

Wash and scrape the salsify, then cut it into ½ inch thick slices.
Boil the slices in a saucepan until tender.
Turn off most of the cooking liquid, then add milk or cream and salt to taste.
Boil for an additional 5 to 10 minutes.
Thicken the liquid with rice flour or another thickening agent and serve hot.
If using milk, add a large lump of butter.

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.

Milk + buttertop 7% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together81,283 recipes

Shared aroma: (z)-4-heptenal (biscuit, cream).
Milk + ricetop 7% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together7,374 recipes

Shared aroma: 2-nonenal (fatty, green).
Rice + buttertop 16% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together9,645 recipes

Shared aroma: trans-2-nonenal (cardboard, fatty).