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Artichoke Soup

A creamy soup made from boiled artichokes, milk, and flour, topped with chicken forcemeat balls.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 9 ingredients
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Artichoke Soup

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 ↓

Artichoke Soup

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the artichoke base

  1. Wash the artichokes and boil them in water for 45 minutes.

  2. Drain the artichokes, pull them apart, and press them through a purée sieve.

  3. In a double boiler, heat the milk and add the artichoke purée.

  4. Rub the butter and flour together, then stir into the hot milk, stirring continuously until thickened.

  5. Season with salt and pepper, cook for 10 minutes, and serve with tiny chicken forcemeat balls.

Make the chicken forcemeat balls

  1. For the chicken forcemeat balls, mix chopped chicken, bread crumbs, egg white, salt, and pepper.

  2. Form the mixture into tiny balls and drop them into boiling water.

  3. Simmer gently for 10 minutes, then lift with a skimmer and place in a soup tureen.

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.

Photo for illustrative purposes only · Contact us to use it

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. Butter + breadtop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together27,232 recipes

    Shared aroma: delta-decalactone (sweet, creamy).

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

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

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

    Shared aroma: nonanal (fat, citrus).

  5. Milk + breadtop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together11,466 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-undecenal (sweet).

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

What each ingredient does

Artichokes
Their pulp is puréed to give the soup its body and main flavour.
Milk
Forms the liquid base of the soup and carries its creamy texture.
Flour
Thickens the milk and gives the soup a smooth, body-rich texture.
Butter
Adds richness and helps the flour blend smoothly into the hot milk.
Egg white
Binds the chicken mixture so the tiny forcemeat balls hold their shape.

The step that matters

Stirring the flour and butter into the hot milk. Adding the flour mixture to hot milk without constant stirring can form lumps, because starch granules clump before they hydrate evenly. Continuous stirring keeps the soup smooth as it thickens.

“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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