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To Cook Salsify or Oyster Plant

A boiled salsify dish flavored with milk, butter, flour, pepper, and sweetened vinegar.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 9 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 ↓

To Cook Salsify or Oyster Plant

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Wash, scrape, and slice the salsify into round pieces.

  2. Boil in salted water until tender, then drain.

Make the sauce

  1. Add sweet milk or cream and a piece of butter rolled in flour.

  2. Season with pepper and a little salt, then let simmer for a few minutes.

Finish and serve

  1. Remove from heat and pour over vinegar sweetened with sugar. Mix well and serve hot in a covered dish.

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  3. Oyster + buttertop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together8,184 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2,6-nonadienal (cucumber, green).

  4. Pepper + vinegartop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together27,814 recipes

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

  5. Milk + flourtop 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 or oyster plant
Provides the main vegetable body and mild, slightly sweet flavour of the dish.
Sweet milk or cream
Forms the creamy liquid that gives the dish its smooth, rich texture.
Butter
Adds richness and fat, and with flour helps thicken the liquid.
Flour
Thickens the milk or cream as it heats, giving the sauce body.
Vinegar
Adds acidity that brightens the creamy sauce and balances its richness.

The step that matters

Adding the butter rolled in flour. Flour needs to be cooked in the hot liquid and stirred or simmered for a few minutes to thicken smoothly; otherwise the sauce can stay floury or form 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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