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Jerusalem Artichokes

Jerusalem artichokes boiled and served with a creamy sauce.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 8 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 the artichokes

  1. Wash the artichokes thoroughly in cold water.

  2. Scrape off the skin while holding them under water to keep them white.

  3. Place the scraped artichokes in a large bowl of cold water with salt and vinegar.

  4. Boil the artichokes in salted water until tender but not broken.

  5. Drain the artichokes once tender.

Make the cream sauce

  1. In a saucepan, heat the milk over hot water.

  2. In another pan, mix butter and flour over heat until smooth.

  3. Gradually stir the hot milk into the butter-flour mixture.

  4. Season the sauce with salt and white pepper, and let it boil for 2 minutes.

Serve

  1. Serve the artichokes with the cream sauce.

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. Milk + buttertop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together81,283 recipes

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

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  4. Milk + flourtop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together78,219 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  5. 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
Form the main body of the dish, becoming tender when boiled until just soft.
Butter
Enriches the sauce and carries flavour as the base of the roux.
Flour
Thickens the milk into a smooth sauce when cooked with the butter.
Milk
Forms the liquid base of the cream sauce, giving it body and mild richness.
Vinegar
Acidifies the cooking water, helping the artichokes keep their pale colour.

The step that matters

Stirring the hot milk into the butter-flour mixture. Adding milk gradually while stirring keeps the flour dispersed, so the sauce thickens smoothly instead of forming lumps.

Swap the white pepper

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (artichoke, vinegar, milk, butter, flour):

  1. Capersfits better
  2. Tarragonfits better
  3. Cinnamonfits better
  4. White pepperthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against artichoke, vinegar, milk, 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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