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Salsify Soup

A creamy soup made from boiled salsify, milk, flour, butter, and seasonings.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 8 ingredients
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Why it works: Butter and milk 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 Soup

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the salsify

  1. Wash, scrape, and slice the salsify roots thinly.

  2. Boil the salsify in salted water until very tender, about 40 minutes.

  3. Ensure less than 1 pint of water remains.

Make the soup

  1. Rub together the flour and butter in a bowl.

  2. Heat the milk to boiling point and add the flour-butter mixture, cooking for a few moments.

  3. Place the salsify in a colander and mash thoroughly.

  4. Add the remaining water and the salsify pulp to the milk mixture.

  5. Season with salt, cayenne pepper, and onion juice if desired.

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

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

  2. Pepper + oniontop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together68,474 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-isopropyl-3-methoxypyrazine (earthy, pea).

  3. Flour + buttertop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together124,287 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  4. Flour + milktop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together78,219 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  5. Butter + oniontop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together42,912 recipes

    Shared aroma: decanal (soap, orange peel).

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 roots
Provide the main body and delicate, earthy flavor of the soup when mashed.
Flour
Thickens the milk as its starch swells during cooking.
Butter
Adds fat for richness and smoothness and helps bind the flour.
Milk
Forms the creamy liquid base that carries the mashed salsify.

The step that matters

Cooking the flour and butter into the boiling milk. Flour must be heated for a few moments so its starch thickens the soup evenly and the raw flour taste cooks off. Adding it to cold milk or stopping too early can leave lumps and a pasty flavor.

Swap the onion

The recipe marks onion as optional. How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (flour, butter, milk, pepper):

  1. Potatofits better
  2. Capsicumfits better
  3. Chivefits better
  4. Onionthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against flour, butter, milk, 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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