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Salsify Salad

A salad of boiled salsify dressed with olive oil, vinegar, and parsley.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 8 ingredients
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Why it works: Parsley and olive match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 6% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 9,649 recipes. Both carry 2,4-decadienal, which smells seaweed. The science ↓

Salsify Salad

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the salsify

  1. Scrape the salsify and immediately place it in a mixture of vinegar and water to keep it white.

  2. Boil the salsify in salted water until tender.

  3. Transfer the boiled salsify to cold water.

  4. Drain and dry the salsify.

  5. Cut the salsify into small half-inch pieces or leave whole in sticks.

Dress and serve

  1. Place the salsify in a salad bowl.

  2. Sprinkle the salad with chopped parsley.

  3. Dress the salad with olive oil and white wine vinegar or lemon juice.

  4. Season with white pepper.

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. Parsley + olivetop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together9,649 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2,4-decadienal (seaweed).

  2. Vinegar + olivetop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together12,297 recipes

    Shared aroma: isoamyl acetate (banana, fruity).

  3. Vinegar + white winetop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,776 recipes

    Shared aroma: beta-damascenone (apple, rose).

  4. Olive + white winetop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together2,949 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl isobutyrate (fruity, ethereal).

  5. Parsley + white peppertop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together1,451 recipes

    Shared aroma: myrcene (balsamic, herbaceous).

Ranks compare each pair with 20,000 random ingredient pairs on CompKitchen. How we score pairs

What each ingredient does

White salsify
Provides the main body of the salad, with a tender texture after boiling.
Olive oil
Adds fat and smooth mouthfeel to the dressed salad.
White wine vinegar
Adds acidity that brightens the mild flavor of the salsify.

The step that matters

Keep the salsify white after scraping. Salsify discolors quickly once its flesh is exposed to air. Placing it straight into the acidic vinegar and water mixture slows browning, which is why the step is done immediately.

Swap the white pepper

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (vinegar, parsley, olive, white wine):

  1. Thymefits better
  2. Tarragonfits better
  3. Garlicfits better
  4. White pepperthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against vinegar, parsley, olive, white wine. 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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