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Salsifis a LA Sauce Blanche

Salsifis à la Sauce Blanche is a dish of salsify cooked in a butter‑flour white sauce seasoned with pepper and sea salt.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 ingredients
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Why it works: Butter and flour are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 12% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 124,287 recipes. Both carry isobutyraldehyde, which smells malty, green. The science ↓

Salsifis a LA Sauce Blanche

Ingredients

Directions

Make the sauce

  1. Melt the butter in a stewpan.

  2. Dissolve the flour in the melted butter, stirring well.

  3. Moisten the mixture with water or white stock.

  4. Add pepper and coarse sea salt to taste.

Cook and serve

  1. Add the prepared salsifis and let them cook gently for 20 minutes.

  2. Serve hot.

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  2. Flour + peppertop 19% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together50,459 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

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

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

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

Butter
Enriches the sauce and carries flavour while the flour is cooked into it.
Flour
Thickens the liquid into a smooth white sauce as it cooks with the butter.
Salsifis
Forms the main vegetable, cooking gently until tender in the sauce.

The step that matters

Dissolve the flour in the melted butter, stirring well. Stirring keeps the flour evenly distributed so it does not form lumps. Cooking the flour briefly in the fat before adding liquid gives a smooth sauce that thickens evenly.

“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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