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Salsify Ok Oyster Plant

A stew of salsify roots simmered with milk, butter, flour, pepper, and salt.

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

Salsify Ok Oyster Plant

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the salsify

  1. Wash and scrape the salsify roots, placing them in cold water to prevent blackening.

  2. Cut the roots into 1-inch pieces and place them in a saucepan with enough hot water to cover.

Stew and finish

  1. Stew until tender, then drain most of the water.

  2. Add 1 cup of cold milk and stew for 10 minutes after it begins to boil.

  3. Add butter cut into bits and rolled in flour, along with pepper and salt to taste.

  4. Boil once more and serve.

  5. For added flavor, boil a piece of salt codfish with the salsify, then remove it before serving.

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. 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).

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 stew, becoming tender when stewed in water.
Cold milk
Adds creaminess and a rich, mellow body to the stew liquid.
Butter
Adds richness and fat, giving the stew a smooth, rounded mouthfeel.
Flour
Thickens the stew liquid as it cooks with the butter and milk.

The step that matters

Adding the milk and butter-flour mixture. Once the milk is added, it must be kept at a gentle simmer rather than a hard boil, since strong heat can make milk curdle or scorch. Butter rolled in flour is added in bits so it disperses evenly and thickens smoothly instead of forming 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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