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To Fry Salsify
Prepare as for stewing. When perfectly tender, run through a colander. Add grated cracker, two eggs, well beaten, one tablespoonful vinegar, one tablespoonful butter, one teaspoonful salt, one teaspoonful sugar, a little pepper. Make into oval cakes, roll in grated cracker, and fry a light brown.--Mrs. S. T.
A mock-oyster fritter of the kind that filled out winter menus before salsify vanished from most markets. The recipe assumes you have already read the stewing entry, so it begins mid-process and never states a quantity of root.
- How much salsify"Prepare as for stewing" means scraping or peeling the roots, cutting them into lengths, and boiling in salted water until a knife goes through easily — roughly 20 to 30 minutes. The recipe never states a quantity of root. Two pounds, mashed, gives somewhere near two cups of pulp, which is about what these seasonings suit; that should make six to eight cakes.
- Keep it from blackeningPeeled salsify oxidizes to a dull grey-brown within minutes. Drop the pieces into water with a little lemon juice or vinegar as you work, and cook them in the same acidulated water.
- Grated crackerUnsalted soda crackers or plain water biscuits crushed fine — the period's all-purpose binder and breading, in place of dry breadcrumbs. Start with about half a cup in the mixture and add more only if the mass will not hold a shape; too much makes the cakes dry and pasty.
- The colander is a masherRunning the cooked root "through a colander" means forcing it through with a spoon to break up fibres. A food mill or a ricer does the same job better. Salsify has a stringy core in older roots, and this step is what keeps the cakes from being chewy.
- Chill before shapingThe mixture is loose while warm. Half an hour in the refrigerator firms it enough to form ovals that survive the pan.
- FryingShallow-fry in butter or a butter-and-oil mix over medium heat, three to four minutes a side. "A light brown" is literal — the interior is already cooked, so the pan work is only for crust and colour. High heat scorches the cracker crumb before the cake heats through.
- The vinegar and sugarBoth look deliberate: a tablespoon of vinegar sharpens the mild root, and the teaspoon of sugar answers salsify's own faint sweetness. Together they push the cakes toward the oyster resemblance that gave salsify its common name.
Salsify (Tragopogon porrifolius) was known in nineteenth-century American kitchens as the oyster plant, a name traditionally attributed to a faint shellfish flavour in the cooked root, and Southern cookbooks of the period are often said to have used it as a substitute for oysters in fritters, mock-oyster soups and scalloped dishes — useful inland, in Lent, or when oysters were dear. Housekeeping in Old Virginia, compiled by Marion Cabell Tyree and published in 1878, gathers contributions from a large number of Virginia housewives, which is why this entry arrives signed with initials only and leans on a neighbouring recipe for its first step; the book was assembled as a collective household reference rather than written straight through. Salsify was a common kitchen-garden crop then because it keeps in the ground through frost and can be dug as needed, a real advantage in a period when winter vegetables meant roots, cabbage and whatever had been put up in jars.