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Salsify Salad
Cut some boiled heads of salsify into pieces two inches long, and mix with them some salt, pepper, chopped ravigote, oil and vinegar. When well mixed, add some half-set aspic. Fix a paste croustade on a dish, pile the salad on it, and serve.
A composed salad of the sort that came to the table on a pastry base rather than in a bowl. Nearly everything here needs translating: the vegetable, the herb mixture, the jelly and the vessel.
- SalsifyThe white root sold as oyster plant; the black-skinned root sold as scorzonera or black salsify is a related but distinct plant, handled much the same way. Peel under acidulated water or it browns almost instantly, and simmer in a blanc (water with a little flour and lemon juice whisked in) to keep it pale. "Heads" here probably means the whole trimmed roots; expect 20-30 minutes to tenderness depending on thickness.
- RavigoteIn this context it is the herb mixture, not the sauce or the butter of the same name: chervil, tarragon, chives and often burnet, chopped fine. Roughly 2 tablespoons total for a pound of cooked root. Parsley alone is a poor substitute; the tarragon is the point.
- Oil and vinegarThe recipe gives no proportions; the usual dressing is about three parts oil to one of vinegar. Dressing the salsify while it is still warm helps it absorb, and salting the roots as they cool works better than salting at the end.
- Half-set aspicClarified meat or poultry jelly chilled to the consistency of raw egg white, so it coats the pieces and binds the salad without turning it into a mould. A tablespoon or two is enough. Judge it by feel, not by clock: once it sets firm it cannot be folded in smoothly.
- Aspic is not vegetarianThe aspic is a stock jelly and carries whatever meat it was made from. A vegetable aspic set with gelatin or agar will hold the salad together but will taste flat by comparison.
- Paste croustadeA case of short or puff pastry, baked blind and cooled completely. Fill it at the last moment; the dressed salsify will soften the base quickly.
- YieldThe recipe gives no quantities; a pound of trimmed salsify and a 7-8 inch croustade should serve four to six as a first course. Serve cold but not straight from the refrigerator, or the aspic will taste of nothing.
Salsify was a standard winter root in American and European kitchens through the nineteenth century, valued partly because its flavour was thought to resemble oysters, which earned it the grocer's name oyster plant. It fell out of general use in the twentieth century as year-round produce arrived, and now turns up mostly in farmers' markets and restaurant menus. The presentation here is a cold vegetable salad bound with a little aspic and served on a baked pastry case, so that the whole thing could be built in advance and carried to the table intact. Oscar Tschirky's book is full of these croustade constructions, which say less about how the dish tasted than about how a large hotel kitchen managed volume and spectacle at the same time.