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Plain Cardoons

A simple dish of cardoons cooked with onion, carrot, butter, flour, and water.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 ingredients
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Why it works: Cardoon and flour share more aroma than cooks usually use. They rank in the top 5% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 24 recipes. Both carry isobutyraldehyde, which smells malty, green. The science ↓

Plain Cardoons

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the cardoons

  1. Clean and pare the cardoons.

  2. Cut the cardoons lengthwise.

  3. Blanch the cardoons in boiling water.

  4. Transfer the cardoons to cold water to retain whiteness.

  5. Dry the cardoons on a clean cloth.

Make the sauce

  1. Slice the onion and carrot.

  2. Sauté the sliced onion and carrot in a saucepan with butter.

  3. Remove the carrot and onion from the saucepan.

  4. Mix flour into the butter. Add water to prevent burning.

  5. Bring the mixture to a boil.

Cook and serve

  1. Add the cardoons to the boiling water.

  2. Cook the cardoons until done.

  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. Cardoon + flourtop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together24 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  2. Onion + carrottop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together21,601 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-isopropyl-3-methoxypyrazine (earthy, pea).

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  4. Carrot + flourtop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together8,029 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  5. Onion + buttertop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together42,912 recipes

    Shared aroma: decanal (soap, orange peel).

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

Cardoons
Form the main body of the dish, becoming tender when cooked through in liquid.
Butter
Adds richness and carries the flavour of the sautéed vegetables.
Flour
Mixed into the butter to thicken the cooking liquid.
Onion
Sautéed in butter to add savoury aromatic flavour to the base.
Carrot
Sautéed with the onion to add sweetness and aromatic depth to the base.

The step that matters

Transfer the cardoons to cold water to retain whiteness.. Cardoons discolour quickly once cut because their exposed flesh oxidises. Moving them promptly into cold water slows browning and helps keep the pale colour the dish depends on.

Swap the carrot

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (cardoon, onion, butter, flour):

  1. Arrowrootfits better
  2. Kalefits better
  3. Shallotfits better
  4. Carrotthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against cardoon, onion, butter, flour. 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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