Why it works: Milk and flour are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 14% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 78,219 recipes. Both carry isobutyraldehyde, which smells malty, green. The science ↓
Salsify, or Oyster Plant
Ingredients
Directions
Prepare
Wash and scrape the salsify, then boil it in salted water until tender.
Cut the boiled salsify into slices.
Fry
Dip the slices in beaten egg, then coat with cracker crumbs.
Fry the coated slices on a greased griddle until golden brown.
Alternatively, make a batter with egg, milk, flour, and salt, mix in the salsify slices, and fry in hot oil.
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.
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Milk + flourtop 14% of all pairsSmell alikelowCooked together78,219 recipes
Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).
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Egg + flourtop 15% of all pairsSmell alikelowCooked together106,462 recipes
Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).
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Egg + milktop 18% of all pairsSmell alikemoderateCooked together88,785 recipes
Shared aroma: 2-nonenal (fatty, green).
Milk and flour barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 78,219 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
- Is the main vegetable, cooked until tender before being sliced and fried.
- Egg
- Binds the cracker crumbs to the salsify in the coated version, and forms the base of the batter.
- Flour
- Forms the batter with the egg and milk, giving the slices a coating that browns when fried.
- Milk
- Thins the batter so it coats the salsify evenly and adds moisture to the coating.
The step that matters
Frying the coated slices until golden brown. Frying at the right heat browns the coating through the Maillard reaction while keeping the inside tender. Too low a heat soaks in oil and makes the coating greasy, while too high a heat burns the outside before the salsify is heated through.
“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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