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Stewed Cardoons

A stew of cardoons cooked in stock, finished with béchamel sauce, served with fried bread and stewed watercress.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 5 ingredients
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Why it works: Cardoon and watercress share more aroma than cooks usually use. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 2 recipes. Both carry coumarin, which smells sweet, hay. The science ↓

Stewed Cardoons

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Cut the cardoon heads into pieces and remove the outer skin.

  2. Wash and scald the cardoons.

Stew

  1. Place them in a stewpan and add enough stock to cover.

  2. Boil until three parts done and the liquid is almost reduced.

  3. Add a small quantity of béchamel sauce and stew gently until fully cooked.

Serve

  1. Serve with fried bread and stewed watercress arranged around the dish, with the cardoons in the center.

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. Cardoon + watercresstop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together2 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  2. Cardoon + breadtop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together19 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  3. Bread + watercresstop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together307 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  4. Cardoon + saucetop 17% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together48 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethanol (alcoholic, ethereal).

  5. Sauce + watercresstop 18% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together295 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethanol (alcoholic, ethereal).

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

What each ingredient does

Cardoons
Form the main body of the dish, becoming tender when stewed in stock.
Béchamel sauce
Adds creamy richness and body to the stewing liquid, coating the cardoons.

The step that matters

Boil until three parts done and the liquid is almost reduced. Cardoons are fibrous and must be partly cooked before the sauce is added. Reducing the liquid concentrates its flavour. If the stock boils away completely, the cardoons can scorch or stay tough.

“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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