Name: For Belish or Side Dish
Ingredients: small tender artichokes; large artichokes; cold water; vinegar; lemon juice

Why it works: Artichoke and lemon match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 2% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 636 recipes. Both carry 1-octen-3-ol, which smells mushroom, earthy. The science ↓

For Belish or Side Dish

Ingredients

Directions

Clean the small tender artichokes and serve them raw on a napkin.
Cut the large artichokes into quarters and trim off the hard leaves.
Remove all fibrous parts and soak them in cold water with a little vinegar.
Serve the artichokes in a relish dish with lemon juice to prevent browning.
Serve the sauce separately in a sauce bowl.

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 + lemontop 2% of all pairs

Smell alikestrong

Cooked together636 recipes

Shared aroma: 1-octen-3-ol (mushroom, earthy).
Artichoke + vinegartop 17% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together381 recipes

Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).
Vinegar + lemontop 20% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together7,334 recipes

Shared aroma: acetic acid (sour, vinegar).