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Salsify, or Vegetable Oyster, Stewed

A stew of sliced salsify roots cooked in water, finished with milk or cream, butter, flour, salt, and pepper.

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, or Vegetable Oyster, Stewed

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

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

  2. Cut the roots into 1-inch pieces.

  3. Put the pieces in a stew pan.

  4. Cover the pan with boiling water.

  5. Cook until the roots are tender.

  6. Drain most of the water.

Finish the stew

  1. Add 1 cup of rich milk or cream.

  2. Stew for a few minutes.

  3. Mix 1 teaspoon of flour with a lump of butter.

  4. Stir the mixture into the stew.

  5. 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 of the dish, becoming tender when cooked in water.
Rich milk or cream
Adds moisture and richness, forming the creamy liquid of the stew.
Flour
Thickens the stewing liquid as it cooks, giving it body.
Butter
Adds fat and richness, and helps the flour blend smoothly into the stew.

The step that matters

Stirring the flour and butter into the stew. Flour mixed directly into hot liquid clumps; blending it with butter first coats the particles so they disperse and thicken the stew smoothly. Keep stirring while it simmers so the starch swells evenly.

“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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