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Fried Oyster Plant

A fried cake made from mashed salsify roots, milk, butter, eggs, and flour.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 5 ingredients
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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 ↓

Fried Oyster Plant

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the salsify

  1. Scrape the salsify roots and boil them whole until tender.

  2. Drain and let cool, then mash with a wooden spoon until smooth, removing all fibers.

Make and fry the cakes

  1. Moisten the mash with milk.

  2. Add butter and beaten eggs.

  3. Form the mixture into round cakes.

  4. Dredge with flour.

  5. Fry until brown.

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. Oyster + eggtop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together4,103 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-nonenal (fatty, green).

  5. Milk + flourtop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together78,219 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
Provide the main body and flavour of the cakes once mashed smooth.
Milk
Adds moisture so the mash can be shaped into cakes.
Butter
Adds fat and richness to the mash.
Eggs
Bind the mash so the cakes hold their shape.
Flour
Forms a dry coating that helps the cakes brown when fried.

The step that matters

Removing all fibers when mashing. Salsify has stringy fibers, and any left in the mash will make the smooth texture uneven and the cakes harder to shape and bind evenly.

“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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