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Salsify, Scalloped
Boil the salsify till tender, and wash it or rub it through a colander. Put it into a bowl, which is placed in a larger one half filled with boiling water. This is to keep the salsify hot. Work into the pulp a little butter and milk, or cream, and season with salt and pepper. Add a pinch of celery salt, if it is at hand. Butter some scallop-shells, cover them with grated bread-crumbs, and fill them with the puree. Lay grated bread over the salsify, and place little pieces of butter here and there upon all the scallops. Put them in a hot oven, and let them remain until the surface is brightly browned. If scallop-shells are not at hand, small dishes may be used instead. Time, one hour and a quarter to bake the scallops.
A simple gratin of pureed salsify, from a period when scallop shells were standard kitchen equipment. The one figure to ignore is the baking time.
- The stated time is wrong for modern purposesEverything in the dish is already cooked and hot when it goes into the oven, so the bake is only about browning the crumbs: 15 to 20 minutes at 425F. An hour and a quarter will dry the puree to paste and blacken the topping.
- "Hot oven"Read that as 425-450F. If your grill/broiler is reliable, two or three minutes under it does the same job.
- "Wash it or rub it through a colander"Possibly a misprint for mash. Press the cooked roots through a sieve, colander or ricer; a food mill is faster, and a processor may leave the puree pasty.
- Preparing the salsifyPeel or scrape the roots and drop them straight into water with lemon juice or vinegar, as the cut surfaces oxidise brown within minutes. Boil in salted acidulated water 25-40 minutes depending on thickness, until a knife slides through with no resistance.
- The double bowlThis is a makeshift bain-marie to keep the puree hot while you butter and crumb the shells. A metal bowl over a pan of simmering water does it, or simply work quickly and skip it.
- Scallop shellsDeep scallop shells hold roughly 1/3 cup each. Ramekins, small gratin dishes or a single shallow dish all work; a large dish needs a few extra minutes to heat through.
- CrumbsPeriod "grated bread" means dry crumbs grated from a stale loaf, coarser and drier than packaged crumbs. Fresh soft crumbs will brown less evenly and want a little more butter.
- YieldAbout 1 1/2 lb of trimmed salsify fills six scallop shells and serves four to six as a side.
Salsify (Tragopogon porrifolius), long known in English kitchens as vegetable oyster or oyster plant for a faint shellfish note some cooks claimed to taste in it, was a common winter root in Victorian gardens and is barely seen in shops now. That supposed resemblance may well be why recipes like this one so often direct the cook to scallop shells, though the connection is a matter of inference: the vegetable was dressed in the vessels and manners of seafood, scalloped, fried in batter, or stewed white. Cassell's New Dictionary of Cookery, assembled as an alphabetical household reference rather than a menu, lists a run of salsify treatments in a row, which suggests the root was expected to be on hand from autumn through late winter. The instruction to add celery salt "if it is at hand" indicates only that the writer could not assume the seasoning in every kitchen.