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Salsify, with Butter Sauce

Boiled salsify served with butter sauce, seasoned with salt, pepper, vinegar, and lemon juice.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 9 ingredients
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Why it works: Pepper and lemon match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 3% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 27,047 recipes. Both carry trans-2-nonenal, which smells cardboard, fatty. The science ↓

Salsify, with Butter Sauce

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Prepare the salsify as directed in the previous recipe.

Boil

  1. In a saucepan, bring water to a boil.

  2. Add butter, salt, vinegar, and salsify to the boiling water.

  3. Cook until tender, then drain in a colander.

Finish and serve

  1. Return the salsify to a saucepan and add butter sauce.

  2. Season with salt, pepper, and lemon juice.

  3. Toss well and 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. Pepper + lemontop 3% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together27,047 recipes

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

  2. Vinegar + peppertop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together27,814 recipes

    Shared aroma: 4'-methylacetophenone (bitter almond).

  3. Butter + saucetop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together15,338 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethanol (alcoholic, ethereal).

  4. Butter + lemontop 16% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together41,227 recipes

    Shared aroma: 3-hexenal (apple, fruity).

  5. Vinegar + lemontop 20% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together7,334 recipes

    Shared aroma: acetic acid (sour, vinegar).

Butter and sauce barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 15,338 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 vegetable being cooked, providing the main texture and flavor of the dish.
Butter
Adds richness and a silky mouthfeel to the cooked salsify.
Butter sauce
Coats the salsify, adding moisture and a buttery flavor at serving.
Vinegar
Adds acidity that brightens the flavor of the salsify.

The step that matters

Cook until tender, then drain. Salsify must be cooked long enough to become fully tender, since undercooked roots stay tough and fibrous. Draining well keeps excess water from diluting the butter sauce when it is added.

Swap the lemon

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (butter, vinegar, sauce, pepper):

  1. Lemonthe original
  2. Mangofits about as well
  3. Plumfits about as well
  4. Limefits about as well

Fit is the average pairing score against butter, vinegar, sauce, pepper. Candidates are from the same food group and used in at least 100 recipes.

“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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