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Stewed Salsify or Oyster-plant

A stew of sliced salsify cooked with salt, butter, black pepper, sweet cream, and flour.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 ingredients
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Why it works: Butter and cream are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 8% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 41,516 recipes. Both carry delta-dodecalactone, which smells sweet, creamy. The science ↓

Stewed Salsify or Oyster-plant

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Wash the salsify roots and scrape off their skins, placing them in cold water to prevent darkening.

  2. Cut the roots into thin slices and place them in fresh water to cover.

Stew

  1. Add a little coarse sea salt and stew in a covered vessel for about 1 hour until tender.

Finish and serve

  1. Pour off some water, then add a small lump of butter, black pepper, sweet cream, and flour stirred to a paste.

  2. Boil the mixture 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 + creamtop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together41,516 recipes

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

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  4. Cream + flourtop 20% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together30,481 recipes

    Shared aroma: acetaldehyde (pungent, ethereal).

  5. Butter + peppertop 21% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together85,593 recipes

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

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 roots
Form the main body of the dish, becoming tender and soft when stewed.
Butter
Adds richness and a smooth, rounded flavour to the stewing liquid.
Sweet cream
Adds richness and body, giving the sauce a creamy texture.
Flour
Thickens the cream and liquid into a smoother sauce as it boils.

The step that matters

Adding the flour paste and boiling. Flour must be stirred smooth into a paste before it goes in, and the mixture must boil so the starch fully thickens and loses its raw taste. Adding dry flour directly can cause lumps.

“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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