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Stewed Salsify

A stew of sliced salsify cooked with butter, flour, milk, and seasonings.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 8 ingredients
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Why it works: Pepper and parsley match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 2% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 34,122 recipes. Both carry 4'-methylacetophenone, which smells bitter almond. The science ↓

Stewed Salsify

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare and boil

  1. Cut salsify roots into half-inch slices and quarter each piece.

  2. Boil in salted water until tender, then skim and reserve a small cupful of the water.

Make the sauce

  1. Rub 2 teaspoons of flour into butter the size of an egg until creamy.

  2. Stir the flour mixture into the reserved water until smooth.

  3. Add ½ cup of milk (or cream) and season to taste.

Combine

  1. Finally, add the cooked salsify and let it cook together for about two minutes.

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. Pepper + parsleytop 2% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together34,122 recipes

    Shared aroma: 4'-methylacetophenone (bitter almond).

  2. Butter + milktop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together81,283 recipes

    Shared aroma: (z)-4-heptenal (biscuit, cream).

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  4. Flour + parsleytop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together16,675 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  5. Flour + milktop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together78,219 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

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
The main vegetable, which softens as it cooks until tender and absorbs the sauce.
Butter
Fat that enriches the sauce and carries flavour.
Flour
Thickens the liquid into a smooth sauce as its starch swells when heated.
Milk or cream
Adds moisture and richness, and thickens the sauce further as it cooks.

The step that matters

Stirring the flour mixture into the reserved water until smooth. Flour blended with butter first is dispersed before it meets the liquid, so stirring until smooth prevents lumps. Stopping early leaves starch clumps that never fully hydrate.

Swap the parsley

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

  1. Cinnamonfits better
  2. Nutmegfits about as well
  3. Cardamomfits about as well
  4. Parsleythe original

Fit is the average pairing score against butter, flour, milk, pepper. 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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