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Artichokes

Artichokes simmered in butter, spices, lemon juice, and consommé.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 ingredients
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Why it works: Artichoke and lemon match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 2% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 636 recipes. Both carry 1-octen-3-ol, which smells mushroom, earthy. The science ↓

Artichokes

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Wash and peel the artichokes, shaping them like small pears of even sizes.

  2. Butter a stewpan and arrange the artichokes in circles.

  3. Sprinkle with pepper, salt, nutmeg, and lemon juice.

Stew

  1. Pour in the consommé, cover, and simmer gently for 30 minutes, basting occasionally. They should turn a deep yellow.

  2. Just before serving, roll them in the consommé.

Serve

  1. Serve with Italian sauce around them.

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 + lemontop 2% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together636 recipes

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

  2. Pepper + lemontop 3% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together27,047 recipes

    Shared aroma: trans-2-nonenal (cardboard, fatty).

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

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  4. Nutmeg + lemontop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together11,318 recipes

    Shared aroma: beta-phellandrene (minty, terpene).

  5. Pepper + nutmegtop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together13,015 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
Are the main vegetable; cooking softens their flesh while they turn tender and yellow.
Butter
Adds richness and fat that carries flavour and keeps the artichokes from sticking.
Consommé
Provides liquid for gentle stewing and seasons the artichokes as it reduces.
Lemon juice
Adds acidity that brightens flavour and helps keep the artichokes pale rather than browned.

The step that matters

Simmer gently with occasional basting. A vigorous boil can break up the tender artichoke bases and toughen the outer leaves. Gentle simmering with the lid on cooks them evenly while the liquid slowly flavours them, and basting keeps the exposed parts moist.

Swap the nutmeg

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

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

Fit is the average pairing score against artichoke, butter, pepper, lemon. 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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