Why it works: Artichoke and lemon 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 ↓
Artichoke Bottoms, Preserved in Cans
Ingredients
Directions
Prepare the artichokes
Prepare and clean the artichokes.
Remove all fibrous parts from the artichokes.
Rub the artichokes with lemon.
Parboil the artichokes for 5 minutes.
Immerse the parboiled artichokes in cold water.
Make the sauce and cook
In a saucepan, combine melted butter and flour, mixing well.
Add boiling water to the mixture.
Stir the mixture until it boils.
Add the juice of 3 lemons to the mixture.
Let the mixture boil slowly for 20 minutes.
Add the artichokes to the mixture.
Cover the saucepan and cook the contents slowly for 15 minutes.
Remove the saucepan from heat and let it cool.
Pack and seal
Dip each artichoke in lukewarm water.
Dry each artichoke on a napkin.
Place the artichokes in quart tin cans.
Cover the artichokes with cold boiled water.
Add the juice of 2 lemons to each can.
Solder the cover.
Boil the cans in a hot water bath for 1.5 hours.
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 + lemontop 2% of all pairsSmell alikestrongCooked together636 recipes
Shared aroma: 1-octen-3-ol (mushroom, earthy).
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Artichoke + flourtop 6% of all pairsSmell alikestrongCooked together466 recipes
Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).
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Butter + flourtop 12% of all pairsSmell alikelowCooked together124,287 recipes
Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).
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Artichoke + buttertop 15% of all pairsSmell alikemoderateCooked together893 recipes
Shared aroma: trans-2-hexenal (green, leafy).
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Lemon + buttertop 16% of all pairsSmell alikemoderateCooked 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
- Artichokes
- The main vegetable, whose tender bottoms are cooked, then preserved in the cans.
- Butter
- Adds richness and a smooth, rounded flavour to the sauce.
- Flour
- Thickens the butter and water into a smooth sauce that coats the artichokes.
- Lemon juice
- Adds acidity that brightens the flavour and helps slow browning of the artichokes.
The step that matters
Hot water bath for 1.5 hours. Artichokes are low in acid, so sealed cans need sustained heat to reach every part and make the contents safe to store. Shortening this time or skipping the heat risks spoilage.
Swap the lemon
How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (artichoke, butter, flour):
- Raisinfits better
- Avocadofits about as well
- Lemonthe original
- Limefits less well
Fit is the average pairing score against artichoke, butter, flour. 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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