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Salsify IX Salad or Aspic

A chilled salad of boiled salsify, seasoned with salt, pepper, oil, vinegar, and aspic, served in a mold.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 9 ingredients
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Why it works: Pepper and parsley match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 2% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 34,122 recipes. Both carry 4'-methylacetophenone, which smells bitter almond. The science ↓

Salsify IX Salad or Aspic

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the salsify

  1. Boil the salsifies until tender, then drain and cut them to the length of the mold.

Line and fill the mold

  1. Dress the salsifies like a chartreuse, using a little aspic to stick them together around the mold.

  2. Fill the middle with a salad of small bits of salsifies, all the same size.

  3. Season the salad with salt, pepper, oil, vinegar, aspic, and finely chopped parsley, then toss everything together.

  4. Place the salad into the mold and chill it in ice.

Serve

  1. Before serving, dip a rubber spatula in hot water and rub it around the mold to loosen the salad, then turn it out onto a dish.

  2. If available, add green French beans for garnish.

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. Pepper + parsleytop 2% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together34,122 recipes

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

  2. Parsley + beanstop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together1,376 recipes

    Shared aroma: linalool (floral, citrus).

  3. Pepper + beanstop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together4,733 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-isopropyl-3-methoxypyrazine (earthy, pea).

  4. Pepper + vinegartop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together27,814 recipes

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

  5. Vinegar + parsleytop 16% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together6,477 recipes

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

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

What each ingredient does

Salsifies
Form the main body of the salad, giving it bulk and a tender, mild texture.
Aspic
Sets with cooling to bind the salad and hold the salsify pieces together in the mold.
Oil
Adds fat and mouthfeel to the dressing, coating the salsify pieces.
Vinegar
Adds acidity that brightens the flavour and balances the oil.

The step that matters

Turning out the salad. Aspic sets firmly against the mold, so the salad can stick and tear when unmolded. Briefly warming the mold surface with hot water loosens the gel edge without melting the whole shape.

Swap the beans

The recipe marks beans as optional. How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (pepper, vinegar, parsley):

  1. Black-eyed peafits better
  2. Chickpeafits better
  3. Lentilsfits about as well
  4. Beansthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against pepper, vinegar, parsley. 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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