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Preserve

Artichokes Preserved Whole

This recipe preserves whole artichokes by parboiling, rinsing, and storing them in a salted vinegar solution.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 5 ingredients
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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 ↓

Artichokes Preserved Whole

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Select fleshy and sound artichokes.

  2. Cut off the stem and trim the hard leaves around the bottom.

  3. Cut off the top part in the middle and scoop out the fibrous part carefully.

  4. Parboil the artichokes for 5 minutes in water mixed with a little vinegar.

  5. Immerse them in cold water, then rub the bottom of each with a lemon.

Preserve

  1. Place about 5 artichokes in tin boxes. Cover them with lightly salted cold boiled water.

  2. Add the juice of 2 lemons to each box.

  3. Seal the boxes and boil them in a hot water bath for 2 hours.

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. Artichoke + lemontop 2% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together636 recipes

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

  2. Artichoke + vinegartop 17% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together381 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  3. Vinegar + lemontop 20% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together7,334 recipes

    Shared aroma: acetic acid (sour, vinegar).

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

What each ingredient does

Freshly picked artichokes
The main ingredient, whose fleshy hearts are the part preserved and eaten.
Vinegar
Adds acidity to the parboiling water, helping the artichokes keep their pale colour.
Lemon
Its acidic juice slows browning of the cut artichoke flesh and adds brightness.
Coarse sea salt
Seasons the covering water and helps flavour the preserved artichokes.

The step that matters

Rubbing the bottoms with lemon after parboiling. Cut artichoke flesh oxidises and darkens quickly when exposed to air. Acid from lemon slows this browning, so the lemon rub should be applied promptly after the artichokes are trimmed and cooked.

Swap the lemon

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

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

Fit is the average pairing score against artichoke, vinegar. 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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