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Salsifis Au Jus

A dish of boiled salsify simmered in a brown butter and flour gravy.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 4 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 Au Jus

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Drain the boiled salsify well.

  2. In a stewpan, melt the butter over medium heat.

  3. Add the flour and cook until it turns brown.

Make the gravy and simmer

  1. Pour in the stock or meat gravy and stir well.

  2. Add the salsify and let it simmer gently for 20 minutes.

  3. 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. Butter + meattop 16% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together7,594 recipes

    Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).

  3. Flour + meattop 28% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together5,529 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

Butter
Adds richness and flavour to the roux base of the gravy.
Flour
Thickens the gravy when cooked with butter and stock.
Stock or meat gravy
Forms the liquid that becomes the savoury sauce around the salsify.
Salsify
Provides the main vegetable, becoming tender as it simmers in the gravy.

The step that matters

Cooking the flour until it turns brown. Cooking flour in fat before adding liquid toasts it and removes raw starch taste. Stop too early and the gravy tastes pasty; go too far and it turns bitter.

“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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