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Artichoke-Bottoms Au Blanc

Artichokes cooked in a white sauce of bacon fat, beef suet, butter, salt, lemon, and water.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 ingredients
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Why it works: Lemon and artichoke match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 2% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 636 recipes. Both carry 1-octen-3-ol, which smells mushroom, earthy. The science ↓

Artichoke-Bottoms Au Blanc

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Trim the artichokes neatly, leaving the tender leaves at the heart.

  2. Blanch the artichokes in salted water until you can remove the leaves and choke without breaking the bottoms.

  3. Place the artichokes in cold water.

Cook

  1. In a pot, combine bacon fat, beef suet, butter, salt, lemon slices, and enough water to cover the vegetables.

  2. Simmer for 30 minutes.

  3. Add the artichokes and stew until tender, about 30 minutes more.

  4. Remove the artichokes and drain.

Serve

  1. Serve with sauce espagnole.

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. Lemon + artichoketop 2% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together636 recipes

    Shared aroma: 1-octen-3-ol (mushroom, earthy).

  2. Butter + artichoketop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together893 recipes

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

  3. Butter + lemontop 16% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together41,227 recipes

    Shared aroma: 3-hexenal (apple, fruity).

  4. Beef + buttertop 16% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together10,847 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-furfurylthiol (coffee, roasted).

  5. Beef + artichoketop 17% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together140 recipes

    Shared aroma: 1-octen-3-one (mushroom, metallic).

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 as they stew in the fat.
Bacon fat
Provides richness and carries flavor as the artichokes cook slowly.
Beef suet
Adds savory richness and body to the cooking fat.
Butter
Adds fat, richness and a rounded flavor to the cooking liquid.

The step that matters

Stewing the artichokes until tender. Stewing gently in the fat and water lets the tough fibers soften evenly. Too much heat can break the bottoms or make them stringy, so the simmer should stay low and steady.

Swap the lemon

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

  1. Lemonthe original
  2. Avocadofits about as well
  3. Cherryfits less well
  4. Plumfits less well

Fit is the average pairing score against beef, butter, artichoke. 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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