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Artichoke Bottoms, Stewed for Garniture

Stewed artichoke bottoms seasoned with reduced Allemande sauce, salt, pepper, nutmeg, and sugar.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
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Why it works: Artichoke and nutmeg match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 5% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 156 recipes. Both carry coumarin, which smells sweet, hay. The science ↓

Artichoke Bottoms, Stewed for Garniture

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Prepare the artichokes by cutting them into quarters.

Cook

  1. Place the artichoke quarters in a saucepan with a little reduced Allemande sauce.

  2. Season with coarse sea salt, black pepper, a little nutmeg, and a pinch of sugar.

  3. Gently toss the mixture in the pan over the heat.

Serve

  1. Serve as required.

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 + nutmegtop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together156 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  2. Pepper + nutmegtop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together13,015 recipes

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

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

    Shared aroma: nonanal (fat, citrus).

  4. Sauce + sugartop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together5,147 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethanol (alcoholic, ethereal).

  5. Artichoke + saucetop 16% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked 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

Artichokes
Provide the main body of the dish, becoming tender as they gently stew.
Reduced allemande sauce
Adds moisture and a rich, creamy coating that carries the flavour of the dish.
Sugar
Adds a touch of sweetness that balances the savoury seasoning.

Swap the nutmeg

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

  1. Capersfits better
  2. Tarragonfits about as well
  3. Nutmegthe original
  4. Parsleyfits about as well

Fit is the average pairing score against artichoke, sauce, pepper, sugar. 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.

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