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Boiled Salsify

Boiled salsify is a vegetable dish cooked in water and served with butter, lemon juice, salt, and pepper.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 ingredients
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Why it works: Lemon and pepper match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 3% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 27,047 recipes. Both carry trans-2-nonenal, which smells cardboard, fatty. The science ↓

Boiled Salsify

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Wash and scrape the salsify, then place it in cold water.

  2. Cut the salsify into 1-inch pieces.

Boil and drain

  1. Boil the salsify rapidly uncovered in a granite stew-pan.

  2. Add a little vinegar to help keep it white.

  3. Drain the salsify well.

Serve

  1. Serve with plenty of butter, lemon juice, salt, and pepper to taste.

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. Lemon + peppertop 3% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together27,047 recipes

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

  2. Vinegar + peppertop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together27,814 recipes

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

  3. Butter + lemontop 16% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together41,227 recipes

    Shared aroma: 3-hexenal (apple, fruity).

  4. Vinegar + lemontop 20% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together7,334 recipes

    Shared aroma: acetic acid (sour, vinegar).

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

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

Ranks compare each pair with 20,000 random ingredient pairs on CompKitchen. How we score pairs

What each ingredient does

Salsify
The main vegetable, whose tender flesh becomes the dish once boiled.
Butter
Adds richness and a smooth, fatty mouthfeel to the cooked salsify.
Lemon juice
Adds acidity that brightens the mild, earthy flavour of the salsify.
Vinegar
Its acidity helps salsify keep its pale colour while boiling.

The step that matters

Adding vinegar to the boiling water. Salsify discolours when its flesh is exposed to air and heat. A little acid in the cooking water helps it stay pale, so the vinegar should be added while it boils.

Swap the lemon

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

  1. Lemonthe original
  2. Mangofits about as well
  3. Plumfits about as well
  4. Cherryfits less well

Fit is the average pairing score against vinegar, butter, 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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