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Salsify Dressed As Oysters

Boiled salsify coated with egg and breadcrumbs, fried until golden.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 ingredients
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Why it works: Butter and bread are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 7% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 27,232 recipes. Both carry delta-decalactone, which smells sweet, creamy. The science ↓

Salsify Dressed As Oysters

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the salsify

  1. Wash and scrape the salsify.

  2. Boil it until perfectly soft but not broken.

  3. Mash the salsify.

  4. Season with butter, pepper, and coarse sea salt to taste.

Bread and fry

  1. Beat the yolks of 3 eggs until light.

  2. Crumb the stale bread.

  3. Season with salt and pepper.

  4. Heat a pan with a mixture of lard and butter.

  5. Take a spoonful of the salsify.

  6. Dip it into the egg.

  7. Cover it with the crumbs.

  8. Drop it into the hot pan.

  9. Fry until the underside is done.

  10. Add more egg and crumbs on top.

  11. Turn it.

  12. Fry until light brown.

Serve

  1. Serve hot for breakfast or dinner.

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. Butter + breadtop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together27,232 recipes

    Shared aroma: delta-decalactone (sweet, creamy).

  2. Egg + breadtop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together22,662 recipes

    Shared aroma: (e)-2-octenal (fatty, green).

  3. Pepper + breadtop 16% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together20,964 recipes

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

  4. Butter + eggtop 17% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together118,967 recipes

    Shared aroma: decanal (soap, orange peel).

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

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

Ranks compare each pair with 20,000 random ingredient pairs on CompKitchen. How we score pairs

What each ingredient does

Salsify
Its soft, mashed flesh forms the moist, mild body of each fritter.
Eggs
Beaten yolks coat the fritters and help bind them while they fry.
Stale loaf of baker's bread
Dry crumbs form a crisp, golden crust that browns in the hot fat.
Butter
Adds richness and flavour to the mashed salsify and the frying fat.
Lard
Provides a hot frying fat that browns the crumb coating evenly.

The step that matters

Boil the salsify until perfectly soft but not broken. Undercooked salsify stays fibrous and won't mash smoothly, while overcooked pieces release water and fall apart. Both make the mixture hard to shape and bind, so the fritters may crumble in the pan.

“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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