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How to Cook Pickled Artichokes

Pickled artichokes simmered in a butter, flour, and lemon juice sauce.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 5 ingredients
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Why it works: Lemon and artichoke 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 ↓

How to Cook Pickled Artichokes

Ingredients

Directions

Make the sauce

  1. In a saucepan, melt the butter.

  2. Stir in the flour until well mixed.

  3. Gradually add the boiling water while stirring.

  4. Allow the mixture to boil slowly.

Add the artichokes and cook

  1. Add the lemon juice and prepared artichokes.

  2. Cover the saucepan and let it boil slowly until ready.

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. Lemon + artichoketop 2% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together636 recipes

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

  2. Flour + artichoketop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together466 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  3. Butter + flourtop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together124,287 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  4. Butter + artichoketop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together893 recipes

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

  5. Butter + lemontop 16% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together41,227 recipes

    Shared aroma: 3-hexenal (apple, fruity).

Butter and flour barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 124,287 recipes: they work on texture and structure more than aroma.

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

What each ingredient does

Butter
Adds fat for richness and flavor, and carries the flour into a smooth base.
Flour
Thickens the liquid as its starch swells with heat, giving the sauce body.
Lemon juice
Adds acidity that brightens the flavor and balances the richness of the butter.
Prepared artichokes
The main vegetable, which softens as it simmers and takes on the sauce's flavor.

The step that matters

Gradually add the boiling water while stirring. Flour clumps if liquid is poured in all at once. Adding it slowly while stirring lets each starch granule separate and hydrate, giving a smooth, thickened sauce.

Swap the lemon

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (butter, flour, artichoke):

  1. Raisinfits better
  2. Avocadofits about as well
  3. Lemonthe original
  4. Limefits less well

Fit is the average pairing score against butter, flour, 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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