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Salsify, or Oyster Plant

Boiled or fried salsify served with butter or sauce and garnished with fried parsley.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 13 ingredients
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Why it works: Pepper and parsley match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 2% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 34,122 recipes. Both carry 4'-methylacetophenone, which smells bitter almond. The science ↓

Salsify, or Oyster Plant

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Scrape the salsify.

  2. Place the salsify in cold water with a few drops of vinegar, then remove it from the cold water.

Boil and serve

  1. Boil the salsify in salted water for 50 minutes.

  2. Drain the salsify.

  3. Serve the salsify warm with brown butter, maitre-d'hotel sauce, or white sauce.

Batter and fry

  1. Mix flour, beaten egg, vinegar, salt, pepper, and enough milk to make a thin paste.

  2. Dip the boiled salsify in the paste.

  3. Fry the salsify in hot lard until golden.

  4. Serve the fried salsify with fried parsley around the dish.

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 + parsleytop 2% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together34,122 recipes

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

  2. Butter + milktop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together81,283 recipes

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

  3. Butter + flourtop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together124,287 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  4. Flour + parsleytop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together16,675 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  5. Oyster + buttertop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together8,184 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2,6-nonadienal (cucumber, green).

Butter and flour 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
The main vegetable, cooked until tender before it is served or battered.
Flour
Forms a thin paste with the egg and milk that coats the salsify and fries to a crisp golden crust.
Beaten egg
Binds the flour and milk into a paste that holds onto the salsify while frying.
Milk
Thins the flour and egg into a pourable batter that coats the salsify evenly.
Hot lard
Conducts heat to the batter, browning it and crisping the coating as it fries.

The step that matters

Frying the battered salsify in hot lard. The lard must be hot enough to set and brown the thin batter quickly. If it is too cool, the coating soaks up fat and turns greasy instead of crisp.

Swap the parsley

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (oyster, vinegar, butter, flour, egg, pepper, milk):

  1. Parsleythe original
  2. Nutmegfits about as well
  3. Tarragonfits about as well
  4. Cinnamonfits about as well

Fit is the average pairing score against oyster, vinegar, butter, flour, egg, pepper, milk. 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.

More salsify recipes

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

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