Skip to main content
Main

Farced Artichokes

A dish of boiled artichokes stuffed with a savory mixture of lard, butter, mushrooms, herbs, and spices, then baked with bacon.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 14 ingredients
Jump to recipe ↓

Why it works: Artichoke and shallot share more aroma than cooks usually use. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 97 recipes. Both carry 1-octen-3-ol, which smells mushroom, earthy. The science ↓

Farced Artichokes

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the artichokes

  1. Prepare the artichokes by removing the points of the leaves and boiling them in salted water until tender and green.

  2. Transfer the artichokes to cold water, then carefully open them and remove the choke.

  3. Replace the bottoms.

  4. Return them to hot water to warm.

Make the filling

  1. Combine the lard, butter, mushrooms, parsley, scallions, shallots, salt, pepper, and spices in a stewpan, and mix well.

  2. Fill the artichokes with the mixture.

  3. Tie them up.

Braise and cook

  1. Cover the bottom of a clean stewpan with bacon slices.

  2. Place the artichokes inside.

  3. Add thyme, garlic, and stock.

  4. Cook on a hot hearth or embers until heated through.

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 + shallottop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together97 recipes

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

  2. Parsley + thymetop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together9,057 recipes

    Shared aroma: cuminaldehyde (Spicy, cumin).

  3. Parsley + shallottop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together3,737 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2,4-decadienal (seaweed).

  4. Shallot + thymetop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together1,476 recipes

    Shared aroma: eucalyptol (eucalyptus, herbal).

  5. Parsley + peppertop 2% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together34,122 recipes

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

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

What each ingredient does

Artichokes
Provide the tender leaves and heart that form the body of the dish.
Lard
Adds richness and a moist, tender texture to the filling.
Butter
Adds fat for richness and a smooth, moist filling.
Mushrooms
Add savoury, earthy flavour and moisture to the filling.
Stock
Adds moisture and savoury flavour as the artichokes cook.

The step that matters

Return the artichokes to hot water to warm. Artichokes that are not kept warm before filling can cool the fat in the stuffing and cook unevenly. Keeping them hot helps the filling heat through and stay soft and cohesive during the final cooking.

Swap the clove

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (artichoke, butter, mushroom, parsley, shallot, pepper, thyme):

  1. Capersfits better
  2. Marjoramfits better
  3. Tarragonfits better
  4. Clovethe original

Fit is the average pairing score against artichoke, butter, mushroom, parsley, shallot, pepper, thyme. 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.

More stuffed artichokes recipes

Italian 4 See all 38 →

You might also like

Mushroom SoupMushroom Soup60 recipesArtichoke SoupArtichoke Soup55 recipesTomato SoupTomato Soup526 recipesBrown BreadBrown Bread461 recipes