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Puree of Artichoke a LA CrAiIIE

A creamy artichoke puree with celery, turnip, onion, butter, milk, stock, and cream, served with fried croutons.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 12 ingredients
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Why it works: Turnip and artichoke match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 140 recipes. Both carry coumarin, which smells sweet, hay. The science ↓

Puree of Artichoke a LA CrAiIIE

Ingredients

Directions

Make the puree

  1. Melt the butter in a stewpan and add the celery, turnip, and onion. Stir continuously for 15 minutes.

  2. Add the artichokes, new milk, sugar, and coarse sea salt.

  3. Pour in the white stock and let it simmer until the vegetables are soft.

  4. Strain the mixture.

  5. Beat the vegetables through a wire sieve and then a fine sieve.

  6. Return the puree to the stock.

Finish and serve

  1. Add the cream and simmer for 5 minutes.

  2. Season with salt to taste.

  3. Serve with fried croutons.

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. Turnip + artichoketop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together140 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  2. Celery + turniptop 2% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together4,418 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  3. Turnip + oniontop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together7,585 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  4. Celery + artichoketop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together183 recipes

    Shared aroma: nonanal (fat, citrus).

  5. Butter + milktop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together81,283 recipes

    Shared aroma: (z)-4-heptenal (biscuit, cream).

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 puree, giving the soup its flavour and thick texture once sieved.
Butter
Fat that softens the onion, celery and turnip without browning them, building a mellow base.
White stock
Liquid that cooks the vegetables until soft and thins the puree to a soup consistency.
Cream
Adds richness and a smooth, silky mouthfeel to the finished puree.
New milk
Adds richness and a mild sweetness that softens the vegetable flavour.

The step that matters

Beating the vegetables through the sieves. Pushing the cooked vegetables through a wire sieve and then a fine sieve breaks down their cell walls and removes fibres. Skipping or rushing this leaves the puree grainy instead of smooth.

Swap the onion

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (celery, turnip, butter, artichoke, milk, sugar, cream):

  1. Leekfits better
  2. Parsnipfits better
  3. Beetrootfits better
  4. Onionthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against celery, turnip, butter, artichoke, milk, sugar, cream. 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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