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Stewed Salsify

A stew of sliced salsify cooked with milk, butter, and cracker crumbs.

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 ↓

Stewed Salsify

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Scrape the salsify and cut it into 1-inch lengths, placing it in cold water.

  2. Boil the salsify in salted water until tender, then drain.

Stew and serve

  1. In a saucepan, combine the drained salsify with hot milk and simmer for 5 minutes.

  2. Stir in the butter, cracker crumbs, pepper, and salt.

  3. Stew gently for 3 minutes and serve.

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 + peppertop 21% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together85,593 recipes

    Shared aroma: trans-2-nonenal (cardboard, fatty).

  3. Milk + peppertop 22% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together26,984 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl 2-methylbutyrate (fruity, apple).

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 through boiling and then stewing in milk.
Milk
Forms the creamy stewing liquid that gives the dish its moist, soft texture.
Cracker crumbs
Thicken the milk as they absorb liquid, giving the stew body.
Butter
Adds fat for richness and a smooth, rounded flavor.

“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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