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Oyster Plant or Salsify Cakes

Cakes made from mashed oyster plant (salsify) mixed with butter, salt, pepper, and flour, then fried.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 5 ingredients
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Why it works: Butter and flour are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 12% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 124,287 recipes. Both carry isobutyraldehyde, which smells malty, green. The science ↓

Oyster Plant or Salsify Cakes

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Cook the oyster plant as you would for creamed oyster plant.

  2. Mash the cooked oyster plant and season with butter, coarse sea salt, and black pepper.

  3. Shape the mixture into small flat cakes.

  4. Roll the cakes in flour.

Cook

  1. Sauté the cakes in butter until golden brown.

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  2. Oyster + buttertop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together8,184 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2,6-nonadienal (cucumber, green).

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

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

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

  5. Oyster + peppertop 22% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together7,663 recipes

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

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

Oyster plant (salsify)
Forms the bulk of the cakes and provides their mild, earthy flavor.
Butter
Adds richness and moisture to the mash, and helps the cakes brown when sautéed.
Flour
Dry coating that helps the cakes form a crisp, golden crust when sautéed.

The step that matters

Sauté the cakes in butter until golden brown. Flour-coated surfaces brown through the Maillard reaction and butter's milk solids. Cooking over moderate heat lets the cakes brown and crisp without scorching before the interior is heated through.

“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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