Name: Burr Artichokes
Ingredients: artichokes; water; coarse sea salt; drawn butter

Why it works: Artichoke and butter work together. They rank in the top 15% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 893 recipes. Both carry trans-2-hexenal, which smells green, leafy. The science ↓

Burr Artichokes

Ingredients

artichokes
water
coarse sea salt
drawn butter

Directions

Prepare and cook

Wash the artichokes.
Boil them in slightly salted water until tender.

Serve and eat

Serve whole on a napkin.
Remove the leaves one by one.
Dip the large end in the drawn butter and eat only the soft, pulpy part.

Recipe from a historical cookbook (Internet Archive).

Transcribed from a scanned cookbook and modernised for today's kitchens. Where the book gave no heat or time, or said "a moderate oven", the temperatures and times here may be modern equivalents rather than the book's own figures.

Explore the science

The flavor team

The pairs that carry this dish. Each one is judged two ways: how much their aromas overlap, and how often cooks already put them together.

Artichoke + buttertop 15% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together893 recipes

Shared aroma: trans-2-hexenal (green, leafy).

Ranks compare each pair with 20,000 random ingredient pairs on CompKitchen. How we score pairs

What each ingredient does

Artichokes: Provide the edible pulp at the base of each leaf, which softens when boiled.
Drawn butter: Adds richness and fat that carries flavor and complements the artichoke's mild taste.

“What each ingredient does” and “The step that matters” were written by Claude from this recipe’s own method and reviewed in samples by CompKitchen.