Why it works: Artichoke and sauce work together. They rank in the top 16% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 462 recipes. Both carry ethanol, which smells alcoholic, ethereal. The science ↓
Artichokes, Boiled
Ingredients
Directions
Prepare
Wash the artichokes in several waters.
Cut off the stems and trim the leaves if necessary.
Boil and serve
Put them into boiling water and add 1 teaspoon of salt for each quart of water.
If the water is hard or the vegetables are old, add a piece of baking soda the size of a Spanish nut.
Keep the saucepan uncovered and boil quickly for 25 to 30 minutes until tender.
Drain well and serve with Hollandaise sauce, white sauce, or oiled butter.
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.
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Artichoke + saucetop 16% of all pairsSmell alikemoderateCooked together462 recipes
Shared aroma: ethanol (alcoholic, ethereal).
Ranks compare each pair with 20,000 random ingredient pairs on CompKitchen. How we score pairs
What each ingredient does
- Globe artichokes
- Main vegetable; boiling cooks the leaves and heart until tender.
- Baking soda (in the method)
- Added only to hard water or old vegetables, where it helps soften the tissue.
The step that matters
Boil uncovered and keep the water boiling quickly. Boiling uncovered lets volatile compounds escape and keeps the color bright, while a steady rapid boil cooks the artichokes evenly until tender without turning them mushy or dull.
“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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