Name: Fried Artichoke Bottoms, Villeroi Style
Ingredients: 12 artichokes; Villeroi sauce; fresh bread crumbs; 2 beaten eggs; clarified butter or lard; fried parsley for garnish

Why it works: Artichoke and parsley match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 3% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 524 recipes. Both carry trans-2-hexenal, which smells green, leafy. The science ↓

Fried Artichoke Bottoms, Villeroi Style

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the artichokes as in the previous recipe.
Dry the artichokes and dip them in cool Villeroi sauce.
Place them on a plate in a cool place to let the sauce adhere.
Roll the artichokes lightly in fresh bread crumbs.
Dip them in the beaten eggs and coat them in bread crumbs again.
Fry in clarified butter or lard until golden brown.
Serve on a napkin garnished with fried parsley.

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 + parsleytop 3% of all pairs

Smell alikestrong

Cooked together524 recipes

Shared aroma: trans-2-hexenal (green, leafy).
Bread + buttertop 7% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together27,232 recipes

Shared aroma: delta-decalactone (sweet, creamy).
Bread + eggtop 13% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together22,662 recipes

Shared aroma: (e)-2-octenal (fatty, green).
Sauce + buttertop 15% of all pairs

Smell alikelow

Cooked together15,338 recipes

Shared aroma: ethanol (alcoholic, ethereal).
Artichoke + breadtop 15% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together175 recipes

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

Sauce and butter barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 15,338 recipes: they work on texture and structure more than aroma.

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

Swap the parsley

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

Capersfits better
Parsleythe original
Nutmegfits about as well
Tarragonfits about as well

Fit is the average pairing score against artichoke, sauce, bread, egg, butter. Candidates are from the same food group and used in at least 100 recipes.