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Boiled Salsify

A stew of salsify cooked with suet, onion, thyme, bay leaf, salt, cloves, flour, and water, served with sauce or fried.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 15 ingredients
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Why it works: Thyme and shallot match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 1,476 recipes. Both carry eucalyptol, which smells eucalyptus, herbal. The science ↓

Boiled Salsify

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Scrape salsify until white, rub each with lemon, and place in cold water.

Cook

  1. Heat suet with onion, thyme, bay leaf, salt, and cloves for 5 minutes in a stew pan.

  2. Add flour, stir well, pour in water, and bring to a boil.

  3. Add salsify and simmer until tender, about 1 hour.

  4. Serve with Dutch, maitre d'hotel, onion sauce, or demi-glaze.

Leftovers and frying

  1. For leftovers, mix salsify with salt, pepper, vinegar, shallot, and oil; let sit for a few hours.

  2. Make a small quantity of batter, dip each piece of salsify, and fry in lard for 5 minutes.

  3. Garnish with fried parsley before serving.

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. Thyme + shallottop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together1,476 recipes

    Shared aroma: eucalyptol (eucalyptus, herbal).

  2. Thyme + clovetop 2% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together4,108 recipes

    Shared aroma: cuminaldehyde (Spicy, cumin).

  3. Thyme + peppertop 4% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together11,585 recipes

    Shared aroma: beta-phellandrene (minty, terpene).

  4. Clove + peppertop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together17,451 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl octanoate (fruity, wine).

  5. Clove + shallottop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together1,677 recipes

    Shared aroma: eucalyptol (eucalyptus, herbal).

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

What each ingredient does

Salsify
Forms the main vegetable, becoming tender and mild when simmered slowly.
Beef or mutton suet
Adds richness and savory fat that flavors the cooking liquid.
Flour
Thickens the cooking liquid into a light, body-giving sauce.
Vinegar
Adds acidity that brightens the salsify in the leftover dressing.

The step that matters

Simmering the salsify until tender. Salsify must cook long enough to soften fully; undercooked roots stay fibrous and tough, while gentle simmering keeps them intact rather than breaking apart.

Swap the onion

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (beef, thyme, clove, flour, pepper, vinegar, shallot):

  1. Chivefits better
  2. Leekfits better
  3. Mustardfits better
  4. Onionthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against beef, thyme, clove, flour, pepper, vinegar, shallot. 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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