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Scalloped Vegetable Oysters
1 quart sliced, cooked vegetable oysters or salsify 2 cups white sauce 2 cups bread crumbs To prepare the vegetable oysters, scrape, and throw into water into which a little flour and vinegar has been stirred to prevent discoloration; cook in boiling, salted water until tender, which will require an hour or more. Drain, and make a white sauce. Arrange the vegetable oysters and bread crumbs in layers, reserving a portion of the bread crumbs for the top. Pour the sauce over the vegetable oysters and crumbs, and finish with a layer of crumbs. Bake in a moderate oven fifteen to twenty minutes. This may also be baked in individual shells.
A straightforward gratin whose only difficulty is the root itself: salsify oxidizes fast and is sold in unpredictable sizes, so the timing in the original is a starting point rather than a rule.
- Vegetable oyster = salsifyThe two names in the title are the same plant, Tragopogon porrifolius, a long tan taproot said to taste faintly of oyster when cooked. Black salsify (scorzonera) behaves the same way in this dish. Look for it at farmers' markets in autumn and winter; grocery parsnips are not a substitute in flavor, though they will scallop the same way.
- Moderate ovenAbout 350-375F, the usual modern equivalent for the term. The dish is fully cooked going in, so the bake is only to heat it through and brown the top crumbs.
- The acidulated water mattersCut salsify browns within a minute or two of scraping. The flour-and-vinegar water is a classic blanc; a quart of water with a tablespoon of lemon juice or vinegar and a teaspoon of flour whisked in does the job. Drop each root in as soon as it is scraped, not after you have done them all.
- An hour is too long for most rootsModern salsify, especially the slimmer market roots, is tender in 20 to 30 minutes of simmering. Test with a knife tip at 20 minutes. Boiled a full hour it collapses into fibers and loses what little of its oyster character it has.
- White sauceTwo cups means a medium bechamel: 4 tablespoons butter, 4 tablespoons flour, 2 cups milk, salted, with white pepper and a scrape of nutmeg. The book assumes you know it; season it more assertively than you would for a sauce served alongside, since the salsify and crumbs are both mild.
- Butter the crumbsDry bread crumbs laid on plain will absorb sauce from below and stay pale. Toss the reserved topping crumbs with 2 tablespoons melted butter, and if the top has not colored by 20 minutes, finish under the broiler for a minute.
- Yield and shellsA quart of sliced root with this much sauce serves six as a side or four as a main. "Individual shells" means real scallop shells or small china coquilles; 6-ounce ramekins work, and want about 15 minutes.
Salsify has long been known as "vegetable oyster," on the strength of a resemblance most modern eaters find faint, and the name did work the flavor could not: it let a root vegetable occupy the structural place of a shellfish dish. Meatless cookery books of the early twentieth century, many of them written out of Seventh-day Adventist and other vegetarian reform circles, leaned heavily on vegetables that could be made to stand in for a meat or fish dish, and the scalloped oyster -- oysters layered with crumbs and cream, baked in a dish or in shells -- was one of the most familiar American supper dishes to imitate. Salsify was a common kitchen-garden crop through the 1800s and faded from American markets over the twentieth century, which is the main reason this recipe now reads as exotic rather than thrifty.