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Salsify
6 large roots. 1 tablespoon vinegar. 2 tablespoons flour. 1 teaspoon salt 3 pints water 1 cup cream sauce To prevent the roots from turning dark they must be dropped as soon as they are pared and cut into the mixture of flour, salt, water and vinegar. Wash and scrape the roots; cut them into slices about three inches long and drop them into the prepared water. Place the saucepan on the fire and cook for thirty minutes after it begins to boil. Drain and serve with white or cream sauce. Planned for
A loose-leaf page that has lost part of its ingredient list: the flour and vinegar called for in the method never appear in the quantities above. Everything else is straightforward.
- The missing quantitiesThe method depends on an acidulated blanc of flour, salt, water and vinegar, but only the salt and 3 pints of water survive on the page. Common proportions of the period were roughly 1 tablespoon flour and 1 tablespoon vinegar or lemon juice per quart of water; treat that as a reconstruction rather than Mrs. Fryer's figure.
- Why the flour-and-acid bathSalsify oxidizes quickly and the cut surfaces turn grey-brown soon after paring. The acid slows the browning and the flour clouds the water so the roots poach without darkening at the surface. Drop each piece in as you cut it, not after you have pared the whole lot.
- Salsify itselfAlso sold as oyster plant or vegetable oyster, a long tapering root with pale flesh. Black salsify (scorzonera) is a different plant and cooks the same way, but its skin is best scraped after boiling rather than before.
- Cooking timeThirty minutes at a boil suits thick winter roots. Slender or young salsify is tender in 15 to 20 minutes; test with a knife tip and stop while the slices still hold their shape, since overcooked salsify goes woolly.
- Cut size"Slices about three inches long" means lengths of the root, not rounds. Halve or quarter anything thicker than a thumb so the pieces cook evenly.
- The cream sauceOne cup of a plain white sauce -- 2 tablespoons butter, 2 tablespoons flour, 1 cup milk or thin cream, seasoned with salt, white pepper and a little nutmeg if you like. Drain the roots well before saucing or the sauce thins out.
- YieldThe page gives no weight of roots or number of servings. Three pints of water would cover roughly 1 1/2 to 2 lb of roots, enough for about four as a side dish, but that is an estimate, not the book's figure.
Salsify (Tragopogon porrifolius) was a standard kitchen-garden root in nineteenth- and early twentieth-century America, and American cookbooks often sold it under the nickname "oyster plant" or "vegetable oyster" for a faint shellfish note in the cooked root -- a resemblance often claimed and rarely convincing. Its presence in a vegetable chapter of this period is unremarkable: winter menus leaned on storage roots, and salsify, like parsnip and salsify's relative scorzonera, kept well in a cellar or in the ground. The flour-and-vinegar blanc used here is a borrowing from professional French practice, where the same white cooking liquor was used for artichoke bottoms, cardoons and other vegetables that discolor on contact with air; its appearance in a loose-leaf domestic cookbook shows how thoroughly restaurant technique had filtered into instructional cookery. The trailing "Planned for" appears to be the start of a line left incomplete on the page, a hazard of the loose-leaf format.