Skip to main content
Main

Fried Salsify

Fried salsify cakes made from stewed salsify, egg, milk, flour, butter, and spices, then fried in lard.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 8 ingredients
Jump to recipe ↓

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 ↓

Fried Salsify

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the salsify

  1. Stew the salsify until very tender.

  2. Mash the salsify finely with the back of a spoon or a potato masher.

Form the cakes

  1. In a bowl, beat the egg and add the milk, flour, butter, salt, and pepper.

  2. Mix well and form the mixture into small cakes.

Fry and serve

  1. Heat lard in a pan until boiling.

  2. Dip each cake in beaten egg, then roll in flour.

  3. Fry the cakes in the hot lard until they are light brown.

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. Flour + buttertop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together124,287 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  4. Egg + flourtop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together106,462 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  5. Egg + buttertop 17% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together118,967 recipes

    Shared aroma: decanal (soap, orange peel).

Flour and butter 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
Forms the bulk of the cakes and gives them their main flavour and body.
Egg
Binds the mixture so the cakes hold their shape while frying.
Flour
Thickens the mixture and creates a dry coating that helps the cakes brown.
Butter
Adds richness and fat, contributing flavour and tenderness to the cakes.
Milk
Adds moisture to the mixture, keeping the cakes soft inside.

The step that matters

Frying the cakes in hot lard. The lard must be hot enough to brown the coated outside quickly. If it is too cool, the cakes absorb excess grease and turn soggy, while the egg and flour coating may separate or fail to crisp.

“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.

You might also like

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