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To Stew Salsify

A stew of salsify cooked with milk, butter, and flour.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 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 ↓

To Stew Salsify

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Scrape the salsify and cut it into 1‑inch pieces.

  2. Soak the pieces in cold water for 20 minutes.

Cook the salsify

  1. Place the salsify in a pot with 1 teaspoon of salt and enough boiling water to cover it.

  2. Cook until tender, about 2 hours.

  3. Drain the water, leaving about 1 cup in the pot.

Make the stew

  1. Add the milk to the pot and bring to a boil.

  2. In a separate bowl, rub the flour and butter together, then stir into the boiling mixture until it thickens.

  3. Season with salt and black pepper to taste, pour over the salsify, and let it boil once.

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  5. 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

Salsify
Is the main vegetable, becoming tender and giving the stew its body.
Sweet milk
Forms the liquid base of the stew and gives it a creamy, mild richness.
Butter
Adds fat and richness, and combines with flour to help thicken the stew.
Flour
Thickens the milk mixture as it heats, giving the stew a smoother body.

The step that matters

Stirring the flour and butter into the boiling milk. Flour thickens only when heated in liquid and must be fully blended first; adding it to boiling milk without rubbing it smooth with butter can cause lumps that do not dissolve 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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