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Artichoke Soup

A soup made with artichokes, onions, potatoes, dripping, milk, and water, seasoned with salt and pepper.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 8 ingredients
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Artichoke Soup

Why it works: Onion and potato are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 3% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 9,023 recipes. Both carry 2-isopropyl-3-methoxypyrazine, which smells earthy, pea. The science ↓

Artichoke Soup

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Wash and scrape the artichokes, then cut them up with the onions.

Make the soup

  1. Boil the artichokes and onions in the water with the dripping and a little salt for 2 hours.

  2. Mash the cold potatoes until smooth and add them to the soup.

  3. Strain the soup through a colander 30 minutes before serving.

  4. Add the milk, pepper, and salt while the soup is cooling.

  5. Bring the soup to a boil and serve.

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.

Photo for illustrative purposes only · Contact us to use it

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. Onion + potatotop 3% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together9,023 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-isopropyl-3-methoxypyrazine (earthy, pea).

  2. Artichoke + potatotop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together80 recipes

    Shared aroma: 1-octen-3-one (mushroom, metallic).

  3. Potato + peppertop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together8,305 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-isopropyl-3-methoxypyrazine (earthy, pea).

  4. Potato + milktop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together3,611 recipes

    Shared aroma: (e,z)-2,6-nonadienal (cucumber, melon).

  5. Artichoke + oniontop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together738 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

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

What each ingredient does

Artichokes
Provide the main flavour and body of the soup as they cook down in the liquid.
Potatoes
Mashed into the soup, they thicken it and give it a smooth, creamy body.
Milk
Adds richness and softens the flavour, rounding out the soup.
Dripping
Adds fat, which carries flavour and gives the soup a richer mouthfeel.

The step that matters

Adding the milk while the soup cools. Milk can curdle or scorch if it is boiled hard or added to very hot liquid. Adding it as the soup cools and only bringing it to a gentle boil at the end helps keep it smooth.

Swap the onion

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

  1. Spinachfits better
  2. Chivefits better
  3. Asparagusfits better
  4. Onionthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against artichoke, potato, milk, pepper. 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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