Name: Stuffed Artichoke Bottoms, Italian Style
Ingredients: 12 large artichokes; 1 cup forced meat of chicken or veal; cooked fine herbs; fresh bread crumbs; sweet oil; light Espagnole sauce (or gravy); 1 tablespoon butter; juice of 1 lemon; chopped parsley

Why it works: Lemon and parsley match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 14,037 recipes. Both carry beta-phellandrene, which smells minty, terpene. The science ↓

Stuffed Artichoke Bottoms, Italian Style

Ingredients

Directions

The book gives no oven temperature. The 300°F (150°C) in the steps was added when the recipe was transcribed, as a starting point.

Prepare

Prepare the artichokes by removing the leaves and trimming the bottoms.
Mix the forced meat with cooked fine herbs.
Stuff each artichoke bottom with the meat mixture.

Bake

Sprinkle fresh bread crumbs over each stuffed artichoke and drizzle with sweet oil.
Place the artichokes in a pan and cover with light Espagnole sauce.
Bake at 300°F (150°C) until they are a nice brown color.

Finish and serve

Add butter, lemon juice, and chopped parsley to the remaining sauce.
Serve a teaspoon of the sauce over each artichoke bottom and the rest separately.

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.

Lemon + parsleytop 1% of all pairs

Smell alikestrong

Cooked together14,037 recipes

Shared aroma: beta-phellandrene (minty, terpene).
Artichoke + lemontop 2% of all pairs

Smell alikestrong

Cooked together636 recipes

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

Smell alikestrong

Cooked together524 recipes

Shared aroma: trans-2-hexenal (green, leafy).
Bread + buttertop 7% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together27,232 recipes

Shared aroma: delta-decalactone (sweet, creamy).
Meat + breadtop 14% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together2,924 recipes

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

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

What each ingredient does

Artichokes: Form the edible base that holds the stuffing and sauce.
Forced meat of chicken or veal: Provides the rich, savoury filling that is set by gentle baking.
Fresh bread crumbs: Form a crisp, browned topping over the stuffing.
Sweet oil: Helps the crumbs brown and adds richness to the topping.
Light espagnole sauce: Supplies moisture and savoury flavour around the artichokes as they cook.
Butter: Adds fat and richness to the finishing sauce.

The step that matters

Bake at 300°F (150°C) until nicely browned. Low, steady heat cooks the meat filling through and sets it gently while the crumbs brown. Too little time leaves the filling underdone, and too high heat can scorch the crumbs before the centre heats through.

Swap the lemon

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (artichoke, meat, bread, sauce, butter, parsley):

Lemonthe original
Avocadofits about as well
Limefits less well
Cherryfits less well

Fit is the average pairing score against artichoke, meat, bread, sauce, butter, parsley. 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.