Skip to main content
Main

Burr Artichokes

Burr Artichokes are boiled artichokes served with a sauce of vinegar, butter, mustard, pepper, and salt.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 ingredients
Jump to recipe ↓

Why it works: Artichoke and mustard match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 2% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 116 recipes. Both carry trans-2-hexenal, which smells green, leafy. The science ↓

Burr Artichokes

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Remove the outer leaves from the artichokes and cut the stalks.

  2. Soak the artichokes in cold water for 3 hours.

Cook and serve

  1. Boil the artichokes, leaves downward, for 2.5 hours, keeping them well covered.

  2. Serve with a sauce made of vinegar, butter, mustard, pepper, and salt.

  3. Alternatively, serve melted butter in small sauce dishes at each plate.

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 + mustardtop 2% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together116 recipes

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

  2. Vinegar + mustardtop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together14,067 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  3. Mustard + peppertop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together15,430 recipes

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

  4. Artichoke + peppertop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,170 recipes

    Shared aroma: nonanal (fat, citrus).

  5. Vinegar + peppertop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together27,814 recipes

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

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 for a long time.
Vinegar
Adds acidity that sharpens the flavour of the butter sauce.
Butter
Provides richness and fat in the sauce, giving it a smooth, silky texture.
Mustard
Adds sharp, pungent flavour that balances the richness of the butter.

The step that matters

Boil the artichokes, leaves downward, for 2.5 hours, keeping them well covered.. Keeping the artichokes fully covered in water holds steady heat around them, so they cook evenly. Cooking long enough softens the tough bracts and the heart until a knife slides through easily.

Swap the mustard

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

  1. Shallotfits better
  2. Mustardthe original
  3. Chivefits about as well
  4. Spinachfits about as well

Fit is the average pairing score against artichoke, vinegar, butter, pepper. 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.

You might also like

Artichoke SoupArtichoke Soup55 recipesTomato SoupTomato Soup526 recipesBrown BreadBrown Bread461 recipesMutton BrothMutton Broth292 recipes