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Salsify Sauce

A sauce made from boiled salsify, butter, sugar, egg yolks, and optional wine or nutmeg.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 8 ingredients
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Why it works: Lemon and wine are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 13% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 6,157 recipes. Both carry decanal, which smells soap, orange peel. The science ↓

Salsify Sauce

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the salsify

  1. Scrape and wash the salsify roots, rub them with lemon, and place them in cold water until needed.

  2. Boil the roots in lightly salted water until tender, then drain and cut into small pieces.

  3. Stir the salsify pieces into melted butter and simmer for a few minutes before serving.

Make the sauce

  1. In a bowl, cream together the butter and sugar.

  2. Beat in the egg yolks and water, then bring to a boil.

  3. Remove from heat and flavor with wine or nutmeg as desired.

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. Lemon + winetop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together6,157 recipes

    Shared aroma: decanal (soap, orange peel).

  2. Butter + winetop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together8,645 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-furfurylthiol (coffee, roasted).

  3. Lemon + buttertop 16% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together41,227 recipes

    Shared aroma: 3-hexenal (apple, fruity).

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

    Shared aroma: decanal (soap, orange peel).

  5. Butter + sugartop 17% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together98,233 recipes

    Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).

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

What each ingredient does

Salsify roots
Provide the main vegetable body and mild, slightly sweet flavor of the dish.
Butter
Adds richness and a smooth, fatty mouthfeel to the sauce.
Egg yolks
Thicken the sauce and give it a rich, creamy texture when heated gently.
Sugar
Adds sweetness and balances the acidity of the lemon.

The step that matters

Bringing the egg yolk mixture to a boil. Egg yolks thicken through gentle heat, but if they are boiled hard they can scramble and turn grainy. Keep the heat controlled and stir constantly so the sauce stays smooth.

Swap the lemon

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (butter, sugar, egg, wine):

  1. Vanillafits better
  2. Lemonthe original
  3. Applefits about as well
  4. Figfits about as well

Fit is the average pairing score against butter, sugar, egg, 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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