Skip to main content
Main

Salsify on Toast

Salsify on Toast is a simple dish of boiled salsify seasoned with butter, salt, pepper, and flour, layered between toasted bread slices.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 ingredients
Jump to recipe ↓

Why it works: Butter and bread are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 7% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 27,232 recipes. Both carry delta-decalactone, which smells sweet, creamy. The science ↓

Salsify on Toast

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Prepare the salsify as for stewing.

Make the salsify

  1. Boil the salsify and add butter, coarse sea salt, black pepper, and a little flour without draining the water.

Assemble and serve

  1. Toast the slices of bread.

  2. Layer a slice of toast with salsify.

  3. Add another slice of toast and more salsify until all is used.

  4. Serve 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. Butter + breadtop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together27,232 recipes

    Shared aroma: delta-decalactone (sweet, creamy).

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  3. Pepper + breadtop 16% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together20,964 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-nonenal (fatty, green).

  4. Pepper + flourtop 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
Provides the main vegetable body and mild, slightly sweet flavour of the dish.
Butter
Adds fat and richness, carrying flavour and giving the salsify a smooth texture.
Flour
Thickens the cooking liquid so it clings to the salsify and toast.
Slices of bread
Forms the base layers that soak up the salsify and its cooking liquid.

The step that matters

Boil the salsify without draining the water. The cooking water, thickened by the flour and enriched by the butter, is what makes the salsify moist and saucy. Draining it would leave the toast dry and the mixture loose and thin.

“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

Brown BreadBrown Bread461 recipesWhite BreadWhite Bread80 recipesBread OmeletteBread Omelette60 recipesOatmeal BreadOatmeal Bread51 recipes