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Stewed Oyster Plant or Salsify

A stew of sliced salsify roots simmered in milk and thickened with butter and flour.

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 ↓

Stewed Oyster Plant or Salsify

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Scrape the roots and cut them into 1‑inch lengths, placing them in cold water to prevent discoloration.

Cook

  1. In a pot, bring hot water to a boil and stew the roots until tender.

  2. Drain the roots and cover them with hot milk.

  3. Simmer for about 10 minutes.

  4. Thicken the mixture with 1 teaspoon of butter rubbed into 1 teaspoon of flour.

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

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

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

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  5. Oyster + milktop 20% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together2,933 recipes

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

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

Oyster plant (salsify) roots
Form the main body of the dish, becoming tender when stewed.
Milk
Provides the liquid base and creamy texture of the stew.
Butter and flour
Thicken the milk into a light sauce as the flour absorbs liquid and swells.

The step that matters

Covering the roots with hot milk after draining. Adding cold milk to hot roots can cool the pot and slow cooking, and hot milk helps keep the sauce smooth and prevents curdling.

“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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