Skip to main content
Main

Artichokes a LA Parmesan

A dish of cooked artichokes topped with a creamy Parmesan sauce.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
Jump to recipe ↓

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 ↓

Artichokes a LA Parmesan

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Prepare the artichokes by trimming and cleaning them.

Make the sauce

  1. In a saucepan, heat the milk and whisk in the wheatmeal until smooth.

  2. Add the egg and lemon juice, stirring continuously until thickened.

  3. Stir in the grated Parmesan cheese until melted.

Serve

  1. Serve the artichokes with the cheese sauce drizzled over them.

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 + lemontop 2% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together636 recipes

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

  2. Artichoke + parmesan cheesetop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together326 recipes

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

  3. Milk + lemontop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together19,053 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-nonenal (fatty, green).

  4. Milk + parmesan cheesetop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,608 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl 2-methylbutyrate (fruity, apple).

  5. Milk + eggtop 18% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together88,785 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-nonenal (fatty, green).

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

What each ingredient does

Artichokes
Form the main body of the dish, carrying the sauce.
Milk
Forms the liquid base of the sauce that the other ingredients thicken.
Allinson fine wheatmeal
Thickens the milk into a smooth sauce as it cooks.
Egg
Sets with gentle heat to thicken and enrich the sauce.
Grated parmesan cheese
Melts into the sauce, adding savoury, salty flavour and body.

The step that matters

Thickening the sauce with the egg. Egg proteins set when heated, so the sauce can curdle or turn grainy if it gets too hot or is stirred too little. Stirring continuously over gentle heat keeps it smooth.

“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.

You might also like