Name: Artichokes
Ingredients: 1 lb artichokes; ½ pint Bechamel sauce; water with a little vinegar or lemon juice; salt

Why it works: Artichoke and sauce work together. They rank in the top 16% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 462 recipes. Both carry ethanol, which smells alcoholic, ethereal. The science ↓

Artichokes

Ingredients

1 lb artichokes
½ pint Bechamel sauce
water with a little vinegar or lemon juice
salt

Directions

Prepare and cook

Wash, peel, and rinse the artichokes in water mixed with vinegar or lemon juice to preserve color.
Cook the artichokes in boiling salted water with a few drops of vinegar or lemon juice for 30 minutes.

Serve

Drain the artichokes, place them on a dish, and coat with Bechamel sauce.

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.

Artichoke + saucetop 16% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together462 recipes

Shared aroma: ethanol (alcoholic, ethereal).
Artichoke + vinegartop 17% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together381 recipes

Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).
Sauce + vinegartop 26% of all pairs

Smell alikelow

Cooked together3,844 recipes

Shared aroma: ethanol (alcoholic, ethereal).

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, with a tender, mild flesh once cooked.
Bechamel sauce: Adds moisture and a creamy, rich coating that softens the artichoke flavor.

“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.