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To Pickle Artichoke Bottoms

This recipe pickles artichoke bottoms in a vinegar brine with spices.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 15 ingredients
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Why it works: Allspice and clove match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 7,874 recipes. Both carry estragole, which smells anise, licorice. The science ↓

To Pickle Artichoke Bottoms

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the artichokes

  1. Boil the artichokes just enough to remove the leaves and choke.

  2. Trim the artichokes and soak them in saltwater.

Make the pickle

  1. Boil vinegar for five minutes to cover the artichokes.

  2. Add whole allspice, black pepper, ginger, mace, cloves, eschalots, coarse sea salt, bay leaves, and slices of horseradish to the vinegar.

  3. Drain and dry the artichoke bottoms, then place them in jars.

  4. Pour the vinegar mixture over the artichokes and seal the jars tightly.

Serve

  1. To serve, place the artichokes in a deep plate with some pickle, oil, and mustard mixed in.

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. Allspice + clovetop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together7,874 recipes

    Shared aroma: estragole (anise, licorice).

  2. Ginger + clovetop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together6,038 recipes

    Shared aroma: estragole (anise, licorice).

  3. Allspice + gingertop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together2,620 recipes

    Shared aroma: estragole (anise, licorice).

  4. Artichoke + horseradishtop 2% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together18 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  5. Allspice + horseradishtop 4% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together654 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

Large fresh artichokes
Provide the tender edible bottoms that absorb the pickling flavours.
Vinegar
Acidity that preserves the artichokes and gives the pickle its sharp, tangy character.
Eschalots
Add a mild savoury sweetness and aroma to the pickling liquid.
Oil
Adds fat and smoothness to the pickle served with the artichokes.
Mustard
Adds sharpness and pungency that complements the acidic pickle.

The step that matters

Boil the artichokes just enough to remove the leaves and choke.. Overboiling makes artichoke bottoms soft and mushy, while underboiling leaves the leaves and choke hard to remove. Brief cooking loosens the tissue so it can be trimmed cleanly.

Swap the mace

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (artichoke, vinegar, allspice, pepper, ginger, clove, horseradish):

  1. Cinnamonfits better
  2. Turmericfits better
  3. Nutmegfits better
  4. Macethe original

Fit is the average pairing score against artichoke, vinegar, allspice, pepper, ginger, clove, horseradish. 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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