No. 2656

Oyster Plant Salad

Salade de Salsifis

Scrape two pounds of oyster plants, plunge them as soon as they are done in water acidulated with vinegar, then cut into inch long pieces. Dilute two spoonfuls of flour with two quarts of water, add to it salt and the juice of a lemon, a medium-sized onion, a bunch of parsley garnished with thyme and bay leaf; boil up the liquid, then put in the oyster plants, and let simmer until they are thoroughly cooked, then set them aside to drain and get cold, and cut each one into four pieces lengthwise. Range these in a salad bowl, season with salt, pepper, oil and vinegar, also some chopped parsley, and half an hour before serving cover with a mayonnaise sauce (No. 606).

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For the Modern Kitchen

Salsify, the "oyster plant," browns almost on contact with air, so nearly every step here exists to keep it pale. The flour-and-water cooking liquid is the hinge of the recipe.

What oyster plant isSalsify (Tragopogon porrifolius), a long tan taproot sold in some greengrocers and farmers' markets in autumn and winter. Scorzonera, the black-skinned relative, behaves the same way and can be substituted directly.
The blanc"Two spoonfuls of flour with two quarts of water" is a blanc, a whitening bath: about 2 tablespoons flour whisked smooth into cold water before heating, or it will lump. The flour clouds the liquid and shields the cut roots from air so they stay ivory instead of turning grey-brown.
Acidulated holding waterHave the vinegar water ready before you start scraping. Peeled salsify discolours within a minute or two, and the sticky white latex on the roots stains hands and boards; peel under running water or wear gloves.
"As soon as they are done" Ranhofer means as soon as they are done being scraped, not cooked. The peeling and the boiling are two separate operations.
Cooking timeInch lengths simmer tender in roughly 20 to 30 minutes depending on thickness; test with a knife tip rather than a clock. Overcooked salsify collapses into fibres and will not hold the lengthwise quartering.
AromaticsThe onion, parsley, thyme and bay flavour the cooking water only and are discarded. Nothing from the pot goes into the bowl.
The mayonnaiseRecipe No. 606 is a hand-beaten mayonnaise of raw yolk, oil, vinegar and seasoning. If it will sit half an hour at room temperature before serving, as directed, use pasteurised eggs or keep the bowl cold.
YieldThe recipe gives no yield; two pounds of roots, once scraped and trimmed, would serve roughly six as a salad course.

A Little History

Charles Ranhofer, chef at Delmonico's in New York, published The Epicurean in 1894 as a complete record of a French-trained restaurant kitchen working for American diners, which is why a European root vegetable appears here under a nickname familiar to his readers. Salsify was widely called oyster plant in nineteenth-century English because the cooked root is said to carry a faint marine or shellfish note; how convincing that resemblance is has always been argued, but the name stuck in seed catalogues and market stalls throughout the 1800s. The vegetable was a kitchen-garden staple then and faded from American cooking in the twentieth century. The blanc technique Ranhofer uses for it was standard French practice for any pale vegetable prone to oxidising, cardoons and artichoke bottoms among them.