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Sauce

Artichokes

A creamy sauce made from boiled artichokes, butter, egg yolks, lemon juice, and spices.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 9 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

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the artichokes

  1. Boil artichokes in salted water, completely covered, until tender. Keep hot.

Make the sauce

  1. In a warm bowl, rub the butter to a cream with a wooden or silver spoon.

  2. Add the egg yolks one at a time, beating well after each addition.

  3. Stir in the salt, cayenne pepper, and sifted flour.

  4. About five minutes before serving, add the boiling water.

  5. Place the bowl in a saucepan of boiling water and stir rapidly until thickened like custard.

  6. Finally, add the lemon juice and remaining water.

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. Lemon + peppertop 3% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together27,047 recipes

    Shared aroma: trans-2-nonenal (cardboard, fatty).

  3. Artichoke + flourtop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together466 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  4. Artichoke + peppertop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,170 recipes

    Shared aroma: nonanal (fat, citrus).

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

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
Creamed with the spoon, it gives the sauce richness and a smooth body.
Egg yolks
Thicken the sauce as they cook gently, setting it into a custard-like texture.
Flour
Helps stabilise the sauce so it holds its body when heated.
Lemon juice
Adds acidity that brightens the rich butter and yolk base.

The step that matters

Thickening over the hot water bath. Egg yolks set between roughly 140 and 180°F, so the bowl must stay over gently boiling water while stirring rapidly. Overheating or stopping the stirring can scramble the yolks and leave the sauce grainy.

“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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