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Salsify Fritters
Scrape the salsify, throw it for a few minutes into cold water, then cut it in small pieces and cook it until done in slightly salted water. While hot, mash with 1 tablespoonful of butter. Make a batter of 1 egg, 1 tablespoonful of flour, I of milk, season with pepper and salt. Make the salsify into small flat cakes, dip in the batter and fry in boiling lard.
A straightforward vegetable fritter that depends on two things: keeping the cut salsify from browning, and getting the mashed root dry enough to hold a cake. The original gives no quantity of salsify, so work backward from the batter.
- How much salsifyThe recipe names no amount. One egg with a tablespoon each of flour and milk is only enough to coat a modest quantity -- roughly a pound of roots, giving perhaps 8 to 10 small cakes and serving three or four as a side.
- The acidulated water mattersScraped salsify oxidises to a dull grey-brown within minutes. The "cold water" bath works better with a tablespoon of vinegar or lemon juice per quart, and the cooking water can be acidulated too.
- Drain hard before mashingBoiled salsify holds a great deal of water, and a wet mash will not form cakes that survive the fat. Drain in a colander, return to the dry pan over low heat for a minute to steam off, then mash with the butter.
- Cook until genuinely tender"Until done" is 20 to 30 minutes for pieces of an inch, depending on thickness. Underdone salsify stays fibrous and the mash will be stringy; test with a knife tip rather than by the clock.
- Batter consistencyOne tablespoon of flour to one of milk plus a whole egg gives a thin coating batter, not a puffed one. If it slides off the cakes, add flour a teaspoon at a time until it clings.
- "Boiling lard"This means fat hot enough to fry hard; in modern terms somewhere around 365-375F, in enough fat to come at least halfway up the cakes. Lard suits the flavour; any neutral frying fat works. Two to three minutes a side gives good colour.
- Chill before fryingNot in the original, but the cakes hold together far better if formed and refrigerated 20 minutes. Warm mash tends to slump the moment it hits the fat.
- ServingBest straight from the pan with lemon, or drained on paper and held in a 200F oven for a few minutes while the rest fry.
Salsify (Tragopogon porrifolius) was a standard kitchen-garden root through the nineteenth century and into the early twentieth, valued because it stored well over winter and because its flavour was widely said to resemble oysters -- hence the common American name "oyster plant," under which many cookbooks of the period index it. The fritter treatment here -- boil, mash, bind with one egg, fry -- is the same template applied to potatoes, parsnips and leftover fish. Salsify has largely disappeared from American gardens and survives now mostly at farmers' markets and in French cooking, where it is called salsifis and is often braised rather than fried.