Skip to main content
Main

Fried Salsify

Fried salsify cakes made from mashed salsify, milk, egg, butter, and flour, then pan‑fried.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 8 ingredients
Jump to recipe ↓

Why it works: Butter and milk 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 ↓

Fried Salsify

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the salsify

  1. Scrape and cut salsify into short pieces, placing them in cold water.

  2. Boil in salted water until tender, then drain.

Make the paste

  1. Mash the salsify while hot, removing woody bits, and season with salt, pepper, and butter.

  2. Let the mixture cool, then add milk until you have a thick paste.

  3. Beat in one whipped egg for each cup of salsify paste.

Fry and serve

  1. Form the mixture into round, flat cakes, dust with flour.

  2. Fry in hot fat until light brown and serve hot.

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  4. Egg + flourtop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together106,462 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  5. Butter + eggtop 17% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together118,967 recipes

    Shared aroma: decanal (soap, orange peel).

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
Forms the main body of the cakes, giving them their flavour and bulk.
Egg
Binds the paste so the cakes hold their shape when fried.
Milk
Loosens the cooled mash into a thick paste that can be shaped.
Butter
Adds richness and fat to the mash, softening its flavour.
Flour
Dusted on the cakes to help them brown and form a light crust.

The step that matters

Let the mixture cool before adding milk and egg. Adding liquid or egg to hot mash can thin it and cause the egg to scramble, so the cakes may not hold their shape in the hot fat.

“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 fried salsify recipes

Cakes 6 See all 30 →

You might also like

Tomato SoupTomato Soup526 recipesBrown BreadBrown Bread461 recipesMutton BrothMutton Broth292 recipesYorkshire PuddingYorkshire Pudding264 recipes