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Sauce

Artichoke Sauce

A buttery sauce with onion, celery, ham, spices, and Jerusalem artichokes, thickened with milk.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 9 ingredients
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Why it works: Celery and jerusalem artichoke share more aroma than cooks usually use. They rank in the top 3% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 75 recipes. Both carry coumarin, which smells sweet, hay. The science ↓

Artichoke Sauce

Ingredients

Directions

  1. Melt the butter in a saucepan.

  2. Add the onion, celery, ham, cinnamon, salt, and cayenne.

  3. Stir constantly over gentle heat for 15 minutes, adding more butter if necessary.

  4. Stir in the beaten Jerusalem artichokes and milk.

  5. Boil until the sauce thickens slightly.

  6. Strain the sauce, boil again, and 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. Celery + jerusalem artichoketop 3% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together75 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  2. Celery + peppertop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together16,012 recipes

    Shared aroma: 4'-methylacetophenone (bitter almond).

  3. Butter + milktop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together81,283 recipes

    Shared aroma: (z)-4-heptenal (biscuit, cream).

  4. Celery + cinnamontop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together1,009 recipes

    Shared aroma: beta-phellandrene (minty, terpene).

  5. Onion + celerytop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together18,518 recipes

    Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).

Ranks compare each pair with 20,000 random ingredient pairs on CompKitchen. How we score pairs

What each ingredient does

Jerusalem artichokes
Provide the bulk and body of the sauce when beaten to a pulp.
Butter
Adds fat and richness and helps soften the vegetables without browning them.
Milk
Thins the purée into a smooth, pourable sauce that thickens as it boils.
Onion
Adds savoury depth as it softens in the butter.
Celery
Contributes aromatic, savoury flavour as it softens with the onion.

The step that matters

Stir constantly over gentle heat. Stirring over gentle heat keeps the onion, celery and milk-based sauce from scorching or sticking to the pan, and the butter must be replenished if it runs low so the vegetables soften rather than fry.

Swap the cinnamon

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (butter, onion, celery, ham, pepper, jerusalem artichoke, milk):

  1. Thymefits better
  2. Parsleyfits better
  3. Capersfits better
  4. Cinnamonthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against butter, onion, celery, ham, pepper, jerusalem artichoke, milk. 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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