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Oyster Plant

A stew of salsify roots simmered with liquid and finished with butter and flour.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 5 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 ↓

Oyster Plant

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

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

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

Stew and finish

  1. Stew until tender.

  2. Drain the water.

  3. Add enough soup, stock, or milk to cover the salsify and stew for 10 minutes after it begins to boil.

  4. Add a large lump of butter cut into bits and rolled in flour. Bring to a boil once more.

  5. Serve.

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. Milk + flourtop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together78,219 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  5. Oyster + milktop 20% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together2,933 recipes

    Shared aroma: (z)-4-heptenal (biscuit, cream).

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 (oyster plant) roots
Form the main body of the stew, becoming tender and mild as they cook.
Soup, stock, or milk
Provides the liquid that cooks the roots and forms the body of the stew.
Butter
Adds richness and fat, giving the stew a smoother, silkier mouthfeel.
Flour
Thickens the cooking liquid when rolled around the butter and stirred in.

The step that matters

Add the butter and flour and bring to a boil again. Flour-coated butter must be dispersed and heated fully so the starch swells and thickens the liquid. Without a return to a boil, the stew can stay thin or taste pasty.

“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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