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Artichokes, with Oil and Vinegar Sauce

A sauce made from mashed hard‑boiled egg yolks, shallots, vinegar, oil, salt, and pepper, served with artichokes.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 ingredients
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Why it works: Shallot and artichoke share more aroma than cooks usually use. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 97 recipes. Both carry 1-octen-3-ol, which smells mushroom, earthy. The science ↓

Artichokes, with Oil and Vinegar Sauce

Ingredients

Directions

Make the sauce

  1. Mash the yolks of the hard-boiled eggs into a fine paste.

  2. In a bowl, combine the mashed yolks with the chopped shallots.

  3. Slowly stir in the vinegar while mixing with a wooden spoon.

  4. Season with salt and pepper.

  5. Add the sweet oil and mix well.

Serve

  1. Serve the sauce with artichokes, either raw or plain boiled.

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.

  1. Shallot + artichoketop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together97 recipes

    Shared aroma: 1-octen-3-ol (mushroom, earthy).

  2. Pepper + artichoketop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,170 recipes

    Shared aroma: nonanal (fat, citrus).

  3. Shallot + peppertop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together5,898 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2,4-decadienal (seaweed).

  4. Shallot + vinegartop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together2,374 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  5. Vinegar + peppertop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together27,814 recipes

    Shared aroma: 4'-methylacetophenone (bitter almond).

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

What each ingredient does

Egg yolks
Their fat and lecithin emulsify the oil and vinegar into a smooth, thick sauce.
Shallots
Add a sharp, mild onion flavour that cuts through the richness of the yolks.
Vinegar
Adds acidity that brightens the sauce and balances the oil.
Sweet oil
Provides fat and a smooth body, carrying flavour and giving the sauce its richness.

The step that matters

Stir in the vinegar slowly. Adding acid gradually while mixing lets the yolk paste absorb it evenly. Adding it too fast can make the sauce thin or grainy, so the texture stays smooth and cohesive.

Swap the shallot

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (egg, vinegar, pepper, artichoke):

  1. Shallotthe original
  2. Spinachfits about as well
  3. Mustardfits about as well
  4. Cucumberfits about as well

Fit is the average pairing score against egg, vinegar, pepper, artichoke. Candidates are from the same food group and used in at least 100 recipes.

“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.

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