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Oyster Plant, or Salsify

A stew of oyster plant roots cooked in salted water, milk, butter, pepper, and thickened with flour.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 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 ↓

Oyster Plant, or Salsify

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Scrape the oyster plant roots thoroughly and place them in cold water immediately after cleaning.

  2. Cut the roots into 1‑inch pieces.

Cook

  1. Put the pieces into a saucepan with enough hot salted water to just cover them and stew until tender.

  2. Pour off most of the water, then add about 1 pint of milk and boil for 10 minutes longer.

  3. Add a piece of butter, pepper, and salt, then thicken with 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. Pepper + flourtop 19% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together50,459 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, 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

Oyster plant roots
Form the main body of the dish and become tender when stewed.
Milk
Provides the creamy liquid that the flour thickens into a sauce.
Butter
Adds richness and a smooth, silky mouthfeel to the sauce.
Flour
Thickens the milk mixture so it coats the roots.

The step that matters

Thickening with flour. Flour must be stirred in evenly and cooked through, otherwise it forms lumps or leaves a raw, pasty taste. Starch thickens the liquid only once it is heated and dispersed.

“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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