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Fried Salsify

Fried salsify cakes made from stewed salsify, egg, milk, flour, butter, pepper, and salt, then fried in lard.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 8 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 ↓

Fried Salsify

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the salsify

  1. Stew the salsify until very tender.

  2. Mash the salsify very fine using the back of a spoon or a potato masher.

Make the cakes

  1. Beat the egg and mix in the milk, a little flour, butter, pepper, and coarse sea salt.

  2. Form the mixture into small cakes.

  3. Roll each cake in beaten egg and then in flour.

Fry

  1. Fry the cakes in boiling lard until light brown.

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  4. Egg + flourtop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together106,462 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  5. Egg + buttertop 17% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together118,967 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
Forms the main body of the cakes, giving them a soft, starchy texture once mashed.
Egg
Binds the mixture and, as a coating, helps the cakes brown in the frying fat.
Milk
Adds moisture, keeping the mixture soft enough to shape into cakes.
Flour
Dries the surface and forms a coating that browns and crisps when fried.

The step that matters

Fry the cakes in boiling lard until light brown. The lard must be hot enough to brown the coating quickly. If it is too cool, the cakes absorb more fat and turn greasy before the crust sets.

“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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