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Artichoke Soup

A soup made from boiled Jerusalem artichokes, milk, bay leaves, sugar, white pepper, and salt, served with fried or toasted bread.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 8 ingredients
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Artichoke Soup

Why it works: Milk and butter are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 7% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 81,283 recipes. Both carry (z)-4-heptenal, which smells biscuit, cream. The science ↓

Artichoke Soup

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the artichokes

  1. Peel the artichokes and place them in cold water to prevent discoloration.

  2. Grease the bottom of the saucepan with butter to prevent burning.

  3. Boil the artichokes in minimal water until tender and they become a pulp.

  4. Pass the cooked artichokes through a wire sieve.

Make the soup

  1. In a separate pot, boil the milk with bay leaves.

  2. Combine the sieved artichokes with the milk, adding sugar, white pepper, and salt to taste.

  3. For a richer soup, add ½ cup of cream or 2 beaten egg yolks, ensuring the soup is hot but not boiling when adding the yolks.

Serve

  1. Serve the soup with fried or toasted bread.

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.

Photo for illustrative purposes only · Contact us to use it

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. Milk + buttertop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together81,283 recipes

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

  2. Jerusalem artichoke + milktop 17% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together138 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-methylbutyraldehyde (malty, chocolate).

  3. Sugar + buttertop 17% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together98,233 recipes

    Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).

  4. Milk + sugartop 18% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together77,875 recipes

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

  5. Jerusalem artichoke + buttertop 18% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together267 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl decanoate (grape, waxy).

Milk and sugar barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 77,875 recipes: they work on texture and structure more than aroma.

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

What each ingredient does

Jerusalem artichokes
Provide the main body and starchy pulp that thickens the soup when cooked and sieved.
Milk
Adds creaminess and a smooth, mellow body to the soup.
Egg yolks (in the method)
Enrich and thicken the soup when added gently to hot liquid, as an optional addition.

The step that matters

Adding the egg yolks. If the soup boils when the beaten yolks go in, the egg proteins scramble and the soup turns grainy. Keeping it hot but below boiling lets the yolks thicken it smoothly.

Swap the white pepper

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

  1. Cinnamonfits better
  2. Nutmegfits better
  3. Capersfits better
  4. White pepperthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against jerusalem artichoke, milk, sugar, butter. 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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