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Jerusalem Artichokes

Jerusalem artichokes boiled in salted water and served in a bechamel 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 ↓

Jerusalem Artichokes

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Scrape the artichokes and place them in 2 quarts of cold water with ½ cup vinegar to keep them white.

Cook and serve

  1. Boil the artichokes in well-salted water until tender.

  2. Transfer the cooked artichokes to a Bechamel sauce.

  3. Serve hot.

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).

  4. Artichoke + vinegartop 17% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together381 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  5. Butter + vinegartop 23% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together13,513 recipes

    Shared aroma: isoamyl acetate (banana, pear).

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
Form the main body of the dish and soften into tender pieces when boiled.
Butter
Adds fat and richness to the Bechamel sauce.
Flour
Thickens the Bechamel sauce as its starch swells with heat.

The step that matters

Boil the artichokes until tender. Cooking must stop once the artichokes are tender, because overcooking makes them soft and mushy, while undercooking leaves them firm and starchy.

“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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