Name: With White Sauce
Ingredients: 2 lbs artichokes; 1 quart water; 1 heaped teaspoon salt; 1 teaspoon vinegar; ½ pint white sauce

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 ↓

With White Sauce

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

Wash, peel, and trim the artichokes into a cone shape.

Cook

Add salt and vinegar to boiling water.
Add the artichokes and boil for about 20 minutes.
Drain well and serve in a hot vegetable dish.
Pour the hot white sauce over the artichokes.

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).
Vinegar + saucetop 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, becoming tender when boiled through.
White sauce: Adds richness and moisture, coating the artichokes with a creamy layer.
Vinegar: Adds a slight acidity that brightens the flavor of the artichokes.

“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.