Skip to main content
Main

Oyster Plant, Oe Salsify

A stew of oyster plant roots simmered in salted water, milk, butter, pepper, and thickened with flour.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 ingredients
Jump to recipe ↓

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, Oe Salsify

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Scrape the oyster plant roots thoroughly and place them in cold water immediately after cleaning.

  2. Cut the roots into 1-inch pieces.

Cook

  1. Put the pieces in a saucepan and cover with hot salted water.

  2. Stew until tender.

  3. Pour off most of the water, then add the milk and boil for 10 minutes.

  4. Add butter, pepper, and salt, then thicken with flour.

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, 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 roots
Form the main body of the stew and supply its mild, earthy flavor.
Milk
Adds creaminess and liquid that the flour can thicken into a smooth sauce.
Butter
Adds richness and fat, rounding out the flavor and mouthfeel of the stew.
Flour
Thickens the liquid into a stew with body rather than a thin broth.

The step that matters

Thicken with flour after the milk has boiled. Flour needs to be stirred in smoothly and cooked with the hot liquid so its starch swells and thickens evenly; added to cold or unstirred liquid it clumps and leaves a grainy texture.

“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.

You might also like

Mock Oyster SoupMock Oyster Soup21 recipesCorn FrittersCorn Fritters6 recipesTomato SoupTomato Soup526 recipesBrown BreadBrown Bread461 recipes