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Salsify Soup

A soup made from sliced salsify, water, onion, bay leaf, milk, butter, flour, salt, pepper, optional egg yolks and cream.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 11 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 ↓

Salsify Soup

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the salsify

  1. Scrape the salsify roots and place them in cold water.

  2. Cut the salsify into very thin slices and cover with 1 quart of cold water.

Make the soup

  1. Add the bay leaf and onion, cover, and cook for 30 minutes.

  2. Mix the butter and flour together, then add to the pot along with the milk.

  3. Stir carefully until boiling, then add salt and white pepper.

Finish

  1. For a smoother soup, press the salsify through a sieve or grate it before cooking.

  2. For a richer soup, beat the yolks of 1 or 2 eggs with ¼ cup of cream and add just before serving.

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 + creamtop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together41,516 recipes

    Shared aroma: delta-dodecalactone (sweet, creamy).

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  5. Onion + buttertop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together42,912 recipes

    Shared aroma: decanal (soap, orange peel).

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
Provides the main body and mild, delicate flavour of the soup.
Butter and flour
Flour thickens the milk into a smooth, lightly bodied soup when cooked with butter.
Milk
Supplies the liquid base and a creamy texture as the soup simmers.
Egg yolks
Add richness and thickening when beaten with cream and stirred in before serving.

The step that matters

Stirring the butter and flour into the milk. Flour must be evenly dispersed, and the mixture stirred carefully as it heats, so it thickens smoothly without lumps forming.

Swap the white pepper

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (onion, milk, butter, flour, egg, cream):

  1. Nutmegfits better
  2. Capersfits better
  3. Cinnamonfits better
  4. White pepperthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against onion, milk, butter, flour, egg, cream. 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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