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Salsify, or Vegetable Oysters

A boiled salsify dish finished with butter, cream, pepper, and salt, served over 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 Vegetable Oysters

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Wash and scrape the salsify thoroughly.

  2. Place the salsify in a pan of cold water.

  3. Cut the salsify into pieces half an inch long.

Cook and season

  1. Boil the salsify until tender.

  2. Pour off the water.

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

  4. Thicken the gravy with a small amount of flour.

Serve

  1. Serve the dish 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, providing the dish's body and mild, slightly sweet flavour.
Cream
Adds richness and moisture, forming the sauce that coats the salsify.
Butter
Adds fat and richness, carrying flavour through the dish.
Flour
Thickens the cream into a gravy by swelling as it heats.

The step that matters

Thicken the gravy with a small amount of flour. Flour must be cooked in the hot cream or butter to thicken smoothly. Adding too much, or adding it cold, can leave lumps or a pasty taste.

“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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