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Artichoke Bottoms

Fried artichoke bottoms coated in flour and served with a butter sauce.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 8 ingredients
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Why it works: Artichoke and nutmeg match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 5% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 156 recipes. Both carry coumarin, which smells sweet, hay. The science ↓

Artichoke Bottoms

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Blanch the artichoke bottoms in water.

  2. Coat them in flour.

Fry and finish

  1. Fry them in fresh butter until golden.

  2. Place them in a dish and pour melted butter over them.

  3. If desired, mix red wine into the melted butter and season with nutmeg, pepper, and salt before pouring.

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 + nutmegtop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together156 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  2. Artichoke + flourtop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together466 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  3. Nutmeg + peppertop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together13,015 recipes

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

  4. Flour + nutmegtop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together18,623 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  5. Artichoke + peppertop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,170 recipes

    Shared aroma: nonanal (fat, citrus).

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

What each ingredient does

Artichoke bottoms
Form the main body of the dish, becoming tender when blanched and fried.
Flour
Forms a light coating that browns in the butter and crisps the surface.
Fresh butter
Fries the artichoke bottoms, adding richness and golden browning.
Melted butter
Adds moisture and fat over the fried bottoms, carrying the seasoning.

The step that matters

Fry in fresh butter until golden. Frying over moderate heat lets the flour coating brown and crisp before the artichoke heats through. Butter browns quickly and can burn, so the cook should watch the colour closely and avoid scorching.

Swap the nutmeg

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (artichoke, flour, butter, red wine, pepper):

  1. Capersfits better
  2. Thymefits better
  3. Parsleyfits better
  4. Nutmegthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against artichoke, flour, butter, red wine, pepper. 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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