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Salsify, or Oyster Plant Soup

A creamy soup made from boiled salsify roots, milk, butter, flour, and spices.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 10 ingredients
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Why it works: Allspice and pepper match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 5% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 6,395 recipes. Both carry estragole, which smells anise, licorice. The science ↓

Salsify, or Oyster Plant Soup

Ingredients

Directions

Make the soup

  1. Boil salsify roots in boiling water until tender.

  2. In a separate bowl, mix butter and flour together.

  3. Add milk, allspice, mace, and bay leaf to the salsify.

  4. Stir in the butter and flour mixture until it boils.

Season and serve

  1. Season with salt and pepper, then let it stand for 10 minutes off the heat.

  2. Remove the bay leaf and serve.

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. Allspice + peppertop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together6,395 recipes

    Shared aroma: estragole (anise, licorice).

  2. Milk + buttertop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together81,283 recipes

    Shared aroma: (z)-4-heptenal (biscuit, cream).

  3. Allspice + macetop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together3,189 recipes

    Shared aroma: methyleugenol (clove, spice).

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  5. Flour + allspicetop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together4,302 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

Salsify roots
Provides the main vegetable body and mild flavor of the soup.
Milk
Adds liquid, creaminess and richness to the soup.
Flour
Thickens the soup as its starch swells when heated in the liquid.
Butter
Adds fat and flavor, and combines with flour to form a thickening base.
Mace
Adds a warm, aromatic spice flavor to the milk.

The step that matters

Stir in the butter and flour mixture until it boils. The flour must be fully dispersed into the hot liquid and brought to a boil so its starch swells and thickens evenly. Stopping early can leave lumps and a raw flour taste.

Swap the mace

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (milk, butter, flour, allspice, pepper):

  1. Cinnamonfits better
  2. Nutmegfits better
  3. Clovefits better
  4. Macethe original

Fit is the average pairing score against milk, butter, flour, allspice, pepper. Candidates are from the same food group and used in at least 100 recipes.

“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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