Skip to main content
Main

Salsify, or Vegetable Oyster, Stewed

Stewed salsify roots in milk or cream with butter, flour, salt, and pepper.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 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 ↓

Salsify, or Vegetable Oyster, Stewed

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

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

  2. Cut the salsify into 1‑inch pieces and cook in boiling water until tender.

Make the stew

  1. Drain most of the water and add 1 cup of rich milk or cream, then stew for a few minutes.

  2. Rub 1 teaspoon of flour into a lump of butter and stir the mixture in.

  3. Season with salt and pepper.

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. Flour + peppertop 19% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together50,459 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

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

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

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 roots
Provide the main body and mild flavour of the stew.
Rich milk or cream
Adds moisture and a smooth, rich texture to the stew.
Flour
Thickens the liquid as it is stirred in with the butter.
Butter
Adds fat and richness, carrying the flour into the stew.

The step that matters

Rub the flour into the butter before stirring in. Mixing flour with fat first coats the particles so they disperse evenly instead of forming lumps when they meet the hot liquid, giving a smooth, evenly thickened stew.

“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