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Artichokes with Butter Sauce

Boiled artichokes served with a butter and lemon sauce.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 5 ingredients
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Why it works: Artichoke and flour match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 6% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 466 recipes. Both carry isobutyraldehyde, which smells malty, green. The science ↓

Artichokes with Butter Sauce

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare and cook

  1. Wash the artichokes in cold water, changing the water several times.

  2. Trim the leaves and stalk ends.

  3. Place the artichokes leaves down in plenty of well-salted boiling water.

  4. Boil until tender, 30 minutes to 1.5 hours.

  5. Test by pulling out a leaf; if it comes away easily, they are done.

  6. Drain the artichokes.

  7. Let them sit in cold water for 5 minutes.

  8. Remove the fibrous choke from the center of each artichoke using a tablespoon handle.

Make the sauce

  1. Put the artichokes back in boiling water.

  2. Heat the artichokes while making the sauce.

  3. Make a béchamel sauce.

  4. Add 2 oz of butter and 1 tablespoon of lemon juice to the sauce.

  5. Drain the artichokes.

Serve

  1. Place them on a napkin.

  2. Add 1 tablespoon of the butter sauce to each.

  3. Serve the rest in a sauceboat.

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  3. Artichoke + buttertop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together893 recipes

    Shared aroma: trans-2-hexenal (green, leafy).

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

Artichokes
The main vegetable, boiled until tender enough that a leaf pulls away easily.
Butter
Adds fat and rich flavor to the sauce, which is finished with it.
Flour
Thickens the béchamel sauce as its starch swells in heated liquid.

The step that matters

Boil until tender, then test a leaf. Undercooked artichokes stay tough and fibrous, while overcooked ones turn soft and mushy. Pulling a leaf shows whether the base is tender through.

“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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