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Salsify, or Vegetable Oysters

Salsify, or Vegetable Oysters, is a dish of sliced salsify served with a milk and flour sauce, often accompanied by toasted bread or crackers.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 9 ingredients
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Why it works: Butter and bread are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 7% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 27,232 recipes. Both carry delta-decalactone, which smells sweet, creamy. The science ↓

Salsify, or Vegetable Oysters

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Scrape the outside of the salsify.

  2. Parboil the salsify until tender.

  3. Slice the salsify crosswise.

Coat and fry

  1. Dip the sliced salsify in a beaten egg.

  2. Coat the slices in fine bread crumbs.

  3. Fry the breaded slices in lard until golden.

  4. Cook the sliced salsify in enough water to cover until tender.

Make the sauce and serve

  1. Mix the milk with flour.

  2. Add butter, pepper, and salt to the milk mixture.

  3. Bring the mixture to a boil.

  4. Pour the milk mixture over the toasted bread.

  5. Serve with crackers.

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 + breadtop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together27,232 recipes

    Shared aroma: delta-decalactone (sweet, creamy).

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

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

  3. Milk + breadtop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together11,466 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-undecenal (sweet).

  4. Flour + buttertop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together124,287 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

Flour and butter 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 dish, becoming tender when parboiled and cooked.
Milk
Forms the liquid base of the sauce that is poured over the toasted bread.
All-purpose flour
Starch thickens the milk as it heats, giving the sauce body.
Butter
Adds fat that enriches the sauce and gives it a smooth, rounded flavour.
Egg (in the method)
Binds the bread crumbs to the salsify slices so the coating holds during frying.

The step that matters

Mix the flour into the milk before heating. Flour clumps when dropped into hot liquid. Whisking it into cold milk first separates the starch granules, so they hydrate evenly and the sauce thickens smoothly rather than lumping.

“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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