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Fried Oyster-Plant
Cook a bunch of oyster-plant as for Oyster-Plant, Poulette, and when done, put in a dish; add a little salt and pepper and a tablespoonful of vinegar, dip them well in frying butter, and fry in very hot fat for five minutes, separating the pieces with a spoon. Lift them up with a skimmer, drain on a cloth, sprinkle over them a very little salt, and serve on a folded napkin, decorating with a little fried parsley.
A batter-fried vegetable course built on salsify, the root Victorian cooks called oyster-plant. The recipe assumes you have already boiled the root by another entry in the book, so the frying stage is only about color.
- Oyster-plant is salsifyA long, thin, tan-skinned root sold as salsify. Its black-skinned relative scorzonera, sometimes called black salsify, is a different plant and can be cooked much the same way. The name is traditionally explained by a faint shellfish note in the cooked flesh; there is no oyster in the dish.
- The cross-referenceThe poulette entry is not reproduced here; boiling salsify usually means scraping or peeling the roots, cutting them into short lengths, and simmering in salted water until a knife slides through easily, on the order of 20 to 30 minutes depending on thickness. Drain well before it meets batter.
- Keep it from browningCut salsify oxidizes to a dull gray within minutes. Drop the pieces into water with lemon juice or a splash of vinegar as you work, and add a little acid to the cooking water too.
- "Frying butter"Almost certainly frying batter — a plain flour-and-egg coating batter, thick enough to cling. Butter would not dip or hold in very hot fat.
- Fat temperature and time"Very hot fat" is not quantified in the book; around 375°F is the usual modern reading for deep frying batter. Five minutes is longer than a pre-cooked root needs; pull the pieces at two to three minutes, as soon as the batter is set and deep gold, or the coating darkens and the salsify inside collapses.
- Fried parsleyDry flat-leaf sprigs thoroughly, then drop into the same fat for 10 to 15 seconds until they stop sputtering and turn brilliant green. Wet parsley will spit violently in 375°F fat.
- The folded napkinStandard service of the period: a linen napkin on the platter absorbed drips. Paper towels do the draining now, and a warm plate does the serving.
- YieldA bunch of salsify runs about a pound as sold, less once trimmed, enough for roughly four as a vegetable course.
Salsify was a staple kitchen-garden root in Europe and in nineteenth-century America, valued because it kept through winter in sand or in the ground; American seed catalogs and cookbooks sold it as "oyster-plant" or "vegetable oyster" on the strength of its supposed resemblance to the shellfish, a comparison generally treated as marketing as much as gastronomy. Its appearance in a hotel repertoire, alongside a poulette version, reflects the French service such kitchens worked from, where a vegetable arrived as its own course dressed in a sauce or a batter rather than heaped beside meat. The fried parsley and folded napkin are pure hotel dining room of the 1890s hat plplatting does today. Salsify largely fell out of American markets in the twentieth century, and it now turns up mostly at farmers' markets and in restaurant kitchens rediscovering it.