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Salsify, or Vegetap' E Oysters

Salsify cooked with butter, cream, and flour, served on toast.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 ingredients
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Why it works: Butter and cream are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 8% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 41,516 recipes. Both carry delta-dodecalactone, which smells sweet, creamy. The science ↓

Salsify, or Vegetap' E Oysters

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Wash and scrape the salsify thoroughly, then place it in a bowl of cold water.

  2. Cut the salsify into pieces about ½ inch long.

Cook and season

  1. Boil the salsify pieces for 45 minutes until tender.

  2. Pour off all the water.

  3. Season the salsify with pepper, coarse sea salt, a small lump of butter, and enough cream to almost cover it.

  4. If using milk, add more butter.

  5. Thicken the mixture like gravy with a little flour.

Serve

  1. Serve the salsify on toast.

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 + creamtop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together41,516 recipes

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

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  3. Pepper + flourtop 19% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together50,459 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  4. Cream + flourtop 20% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together30,481 recipes

    Shared aroma: acetaldehyde (pungent, ethereal).

  5. Pepper + buttertop 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
Is the main vegetable, becoming tender and soft when boiled until cooked through.
Butter
Adds richness and fat, giving the finished dish a smooth, rounded flavour.
Cream
Provides moisture and richness, forming the creamy sauce that coats the salsify.
Flour
Thickens the cream mixture so it clings to the salsify like a gravy.

The step that matters

Thicken the mixture with flour. Flour must be stirred in thoroughly so it dissolves into the liquid. Added in lumps or too quickly, it stays grainy and fails to thicken the sauce evenly, because starch needs to be dispersed before it swells with heat.

“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.

More salsify recipes

Stewed 41Fried 30Fritters 26Boiled 18Soup 13Stew 10 See all 28 →

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