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Salsify, or Oyster Plant

A boiled salsify dish cooked with milk, flour, butter, salt, and pepper.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 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 ↓

Salsify, or Oyster Plant

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Wash the salsify with a rough cloth.

  2. Place the salsify in a kettle with plenty of boiling salted water.

  3. Boil slowly for about 1 hour until nearly done.

  4. Drain the salsify.

  5. Let it cool until it can be handled.

  6. Scrape off the dark skin.

  7. Cut the salsify into slices.

Cook and finish

  1. Return the slices to the kettle.

  2. Add hot water.

  3. Let it simmer for 15 minutes.

  4. Drain again.

  5. Add milk to nearly cover the salsify.

  6. Thicken the milk to a cream with a little flour stirred to a paste with cold milk.

  7. Add butter, salt, and pepper to taste.

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

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

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  4. Flour + peppertop 19% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together50,459 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  5. Butter + peppertop 21% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together85,593 recipes

    Shared aroma: trans-2-nonenal (cardboard, fatty).

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
Is the main vegetable, giving the dish its flavour and body.
Milk
Forms the creamy liquid that the flour thickens into a sauce.
Flour
Thickens the milk into a smooth cream through starch gelatinisation.
Butter
Adds richness and a silky mouthfeel to the finished sauce.

The step that matters

Thicken the milk with flour paste. Flour must be stirred into cold milk first to form a smooth paste, because dry flour dropped into hot liquid clumps. Starch then swells as the milk heats, giving an even, creamy thickness.

“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.

More salsify recipes

Stewed 41Fried 30Fritters 26Boiled 18Soup 13Stew 10 See all 28 →

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