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Salsify Fritters
Cook oyster plant as for Creamed Oyster Plant. Mash, season with butter, salt, and pepper. Shape in small flat cakes, roll in flour, and sauté in butter.
A two-line recipe that assumes you have already read the entry above it. The work is all in the boiling and mashing; the frying is trivial.
- Salsify and oyster plant are the same rootLong, thin, tapering, dull sand-coloured skin, sold in winter at farmers' markets and some greengrocers. Black salsify (scorzonera) is a different plant but behaves the same way here.
- The missing first step"Cook as for Creamed Oyster Plant" sends you back to the preceding entry, which in the usual treatment means scraping or peeling the roots, cutting them in pieces, and boiling in salted water until a knife goes through easily — expect somewhere around 25 to 35 minutes depending on thickness. Drain thoroughly; wet purée will not hold a cake.
- Acidulate while you peelCut salsify browns fast, like an artichoke. Drop the peeled pieces into water with a squeeze of lemon or a spoonful of vinegar as you work, and cook them in the same acidulated water.
- Mash, then check for stringsOlder or thicker roots have a fibrous central core that a masher will not break down. Push the purée through a sieve or ricer if you feel threads; a food processor chops the fibres finer but can overwork the purée.
- BindingThe recipe as written uses no binder at all, and the cakes will hold if the mash is dry. If your cakes crack, a beaten egg yolk or a tablespoon of flour worked into a pound of mash will steady them without tasting of batter.
- Sauté heatMedium heat in clarified butter or a butter-and-oil mix. Whole butter over high heat will brown and burn before the cakes take colour; the goal is a crust, not a fry.
- SeasoningSalsify is mild and slightly sweet. Be generous with salt and pepper; a scrape of nutmeg or a little grated Parmesan will lift the cakes if you want it, though the recipe calls for nothing beyond butter, salt, and pepper.
- YieldWorking from a pound of trimmed roots, expect roughly eight small cakes — a side dish for three or four. The recipe itself specifies no quantity.
Salsify is commonly said to have earned the nickname "oyster plant" from a supposed resemblance in flavour to oysters — a comparison often repeated in nineteenth-century American cookbooks and often doubted by those who tried it, though it is traditional explanation rather than documented fact. The vegetable was a European kitchen-garden plant that came to North America with settlers and held a place in winter cookery through the 1800s, when a root that stored well in sand or straw had an obvious advantage. The book carries more than one oyster-plant entry — this one refers back to a creamed version — which suggests it was still ordinary market produce when the book was compiled. Its decline in the twentieth century probably had less to do with taste than with labour: the roots are awkward to peel and discolour on contact with air, and year-round refrigerated shipping removed much of the reason to keep a storing vegetable at all.