Name: Artichokes, Provence Fashion
Ingredients: artichokes; water; oil; coarse sea salt; pepper; garlic husks; lemon juice

Why it works: Artichoke and garlic match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 600 recipes. Both carry coumarin, which smells sweet, hay. The science ↓

Artichokes, Provence Fashion

Ingredients

Directions

Clean the artichokes and boil them in water for 30 minutes.
Remove the choke from the artichokes.
Place the artichokes in a stewpan with oil, salt, pepper, and garlic husks.
Cook over hot ashes with fire above and below until browned.
Remove the garlic husks and serve the artichokes leaves downwards in the cooking oil.
Squeeze lemon juice over the artichokes before serving.

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.

Artichoke + garlictop 1% of all pairs

Smell alikestrong

Cooked together600 recipes

Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).
Artichoke + lemontop 2% of all pairs

Smell alikestrong

Cooked together636 recipes

Shared aroma: 1-octen-3-ol (mushroom, earthy).
Pepper + lemontop 3% of all pairs

Smell alikestrong

Cooked together27,047 recipes

Shared aroma: trans-2-nonenal (cardboard, fatty).
Pepper + garlictop 8% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together27,090 recipes

Shared aroma: beta-phellandrene (minty, terpene).
Garlic + lemontop 9% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together8,893 recipes

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