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How to Cook Pickled Artichokes

A sauce of butter, flour, boiling water, lemon juice, and prepared artichokes simmered until ready.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 5 ingredients
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Why it works: Lemon and artichoke match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 2% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 636 recipes. Both carry 1-octen-3-ol, which smells mushroom, earthy. The science ↓

How to Cook Pickled Artichokes

Ingredients

Directions

Make the sauce

  1. In a saucepan, melt the butter.

  2. Stir in the flour until well mixed.

  3. Gradually add the boiling water while stirring.

  4. Let it boil slowly.

Cook the artichokes

  1. Add the lemon juice and the prepared artichokes.

  2. Cover the saucepan.

  3. Let it boil slowly until ready.

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. Lemon + artichoketop 2% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together636 recipes

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

  2. Flour + artichoketop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together466 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  3. Butter + flourtop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together124,287 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  4. Butter + artichoketop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together893 recipes

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

  5. Butter + lemontop 16% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together41,227 recipes

    Shared aroma: 3-hexenal (apple, fruity).

Butter and flour barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 124,287 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

What each ingredient does

Butter
Adds fat and richness to the sauce and carries its flavor.
Flour
Thickens the sauce as its starch swells in the hot liquid.
Lemon juice
Adds acidity that gives the sauce its tangy, pickled flavor.
Artichokes
Main vegetable that softens during simmering and takes on the tangy sauce.

The step that matters

Adding the boiling water gradually while stirring. Flour starch clumps when hit with liquid all at once. Adding the water slowly and stirring keeps the starch dispersed, so the sauce cooks smooth instead of lumpy.

Swap the lemon

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

  1. Raisinfits better
  2. Avocadofits about as well
  3. Lemonthe original
  4. Limefits less well

Fit is the average pairing score against butter, flour, artichoke. 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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