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Stewed Salsify

A stew of salsify roots cooked in water, milk, butter, and flour, seasoned with salt and pepper.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 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 the salsify

  1. Cut the salsify roots into convenient pieces.

  2. Place them in a pot of water to cover.

  3. Add coarse sea salt.

  4. Stew gently until tender.

  5. Pour off the water.

Make the stew

  1. Add enough milk to cover the salsify.

  2. Add a good lump of butter mixed with flour to thicken.

  3. Season with pepper.

  4. Bring to a boil until thickened.

  5. Serve hot.

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 roots
Main vegetable that becomes tender and forms the body of the stew.
Milk
Forms the creamy liquid that the stew is built on.
Butter
Adds richness and fat to the sauce.
Flour
Thickens the milk as it heats, giving the stew body.

The step that matters

Bring to a boil until thickened. Flour thickens milk only as its starch swells with heat, so the stew needs enough heat to thicken fully. Boiling too briefly leaves it thin, while sustained heat can scorch the milk on the bottom of the pot if it is not stirred.

“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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