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Salsify Fritters

Salsify fritters are fried cakes made from mashed salsify, milk, butter, egg, and cracker crumbs.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 9 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 ↓

Salsify Fritters

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the salsify

  1. Scrape and clean each salsify root, then place it in cold water with 1 tablespoon of vinegar to prevent discoloration.

  2. Boil the salsify until tender, then drain and mash through a colander to a smooth paste, removing any stringy parts.

Shape and coat

  1. Moisten the salsify paste with milk and season with butter, coarse sea salt, pepper, and 1 beaten egg.

  2. Form the mixture into small cakes, dip each cake in beaten egg, then coat with cracker crumbs.

Fry

  1. Fry the cakes in boiling lard until golden 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. Vinegar + peppertop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together27,814 recipes

    Shared aroma: 4'-methylacetophenone (bitter almond).

  3. Butter + eggtop 17% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together118,967 recipes

    Shared aroma: decanal (soap, orange peel).

  4. Milk + eggtop 18% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together88,785 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-nonenal (fatty, green).

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

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

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

What each ingredient does

Salsify roots
Form the main body of the fritters once boiled and mashed into a paste.
Butter
Adds richness and fat, giving the paste a softer, more tender texture.
1 beaten egg
Binds the paste together and helps the crumb coating adhere to the cakes.
Cracker crumbs
Forms a crisp outer crust that browns when the cakes are fried.

The step that matters

Frying the cakes in boiling lard. The fat must be hot enough to set and brown the crumb coating quickly; if it is too cool, the cakes absorb grease and turn soggy rather than golden and crisp.

“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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