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Cardoons in Different Manners

Cardoons cooked in blanc, espagnole, or béchamel sauce.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 4 ingredients
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Why it works: Cardoon and sauce work together. They rank in the top 17% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 48 recipes. Both carry ethanol, which smells alcoholic, ethereal. The science ↓

Cardoons in Different Manners

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Cut cardoons into lengths of about three inches.

  2. Remove the stringy part from the heart and the prickles from the leaves.

  3. Blanch cardoons in boiling water for 15 minutes.

  4. Transfer them to cold water until cool.

  5. Wipe cardoons clean with a cloth.

Cook and serve

  1. Place them in a stewpan and cover with blanc sauce.

  2. Set the stewpan over low heat and cook until tender.

  3. Serve with sauce à l'espagnole or béchamel.

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 + saucetop 17% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together48 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 through blanching and slow cooking.
Blanc (sauce)
Keeps the cardoons moist and mildly flavoured while they cook gently to tenderness.
Sauce à l'espagnole (sauce)
Adds a rich, savoury coating to the cooked cardoons when served.
Béchamel (sauce)
Adds a creamy, smooth coating to the cooked cardoons when served.

The step that matters

Blanch cardoons in boiling water for 15 minutes. Cardoons are naturally bitter and fibrous. Blanching in boiling water softens them and draws out some bitterness before the slow cooking in sauce, so they become tender rather than 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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