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Cardoons with Marrow

A dish of boiled cardoon stems served with reduced Espagnole sauce and garnished with small patties or buttered toast with marrow scallops.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 9 ingredients
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Why it works: Lemon and pepper match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 3% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 27,047 recipes. Both carry trans-2-nonenal, which smells cardboard, fatty. The science ↓

Cardoons with Marrow

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the cardoons

  1. Soak the cardoon pieces in cold, acidulated water.

  2. Boil water with the juice of 5 lemons.

  3. Add the cardoons to the boiling water and parboil until the outer surface can be easily peeled off.

  4. Remove the cardoons from heat, peel, and trim them.

  5. Place the cardoons in fresh water and drain on a napkin.

Braise

  1. In a deep flat saucepan, line the bottom with slices of fat pork and add the cardoons.

  2. Season the cardoons with salt, pepper, and sugar.

  3. Moisten the cardoons with enough broth to cover.

  4. Add the juice of 2 lemons and cover the cardoons with thin slices of fat pork.

  5. Cover and boil, then reduce heat to cook slowly until done.

Serve

  1. Drain the cardoons on a napkin, dish up, and pour reduced Espagnole sauce over them.

  2. Garnish with small patties or buttered toast with scallops of marrow and serve.

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 + peppertop 3% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together27,047 recipes

    Shared aroma: trans-2-nonenal (cardboard, fatty).

  2. Cardoon + lemontop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together33 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  3. Sauce + scalloptop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together130 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethanol (alcoholic, ethereal).

  4. Sugar + saucetop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together5,147 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethanol (alcoholic, ethereal).

  5. Cardoon + peppertop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together31 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

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

What each ingredient does

Cardoon stems
Form the main body of the dish; they become tender and mild after parboiling and slow cooking.
Lemon juice
Acidity keeps the pale cardoon from browning and gives a bright flavor against the rich pork.
Fat pork
Fat and savory flavor enrich the cardoons as they cook slowly.
Broth
Liquid that gently cooks the cardoons and carries flavor into them.
Marrow
Adds rich, buttery fat and savory depth to the garnish.

The step that matters

Cover and cook slowly after boiling. Boiling and then reducing to a slow simmer keeps the cardoon fibers tender without breaking them apart. Too hard a boil can make the pieces ragged and stringy.

“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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