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Salsify, or Oyster Plant

A boiled salsify dish simmered in milk and thickened with flour, finished with butter, salt, and pepper.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 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 the salsify

  1. Wash the salsify with a rough cloth.

  2. Place it in a kettle with plenty of boiling salted water and boil slowly for about 1 hour until nearly done.

  3. Drain and let it cool enough to handle, then scrape off the dark skin.

  4. Cut the salsify into slices and return it to the kettle.

  5. Add hot water and let it simmer for 15 minutes.

Make the sauce and serve

  1. Drain again and add enough milk to nearly cover the salsify.

  2. Thicken the milk to a cream by stirring in a little flour mixed with cold milk.

  3. Add butter, salt, and pepper to taste, then 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
Forms the main body of the dish, providing its tender texture and mild, earthy flavor.
Milk
Provides moisture and forms the creamy sauce that coats the salsify.
Flour
Thickens the milk into a cream by gelatinizing its starch as it heats.
Butter
Adds richness and a smooth, rounded mouthfeel to the finished sauce.

The step that matters

Thickening the milk with flour. Flour must be mixed with cold milk first so its starch disperses evenly. Stirred into hot liquid directly, it clumps, and the sauce ends up lumpy instead of smooth.

“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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