Skip to main content
Main

Artichoke Puree

A creamy puree of Jerusalem artichokes, leek, celery, stock, milk, butter, and lemon juice.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 9 ingredients
Jump to recipe ↓

Why it works: Jerusalem artichoke and leek share more aroma than cooks usually use. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 13 recipes. Both carry coumarin, which smells sweet, hay. The science ↓

Artichoke Puree

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Pare the artichokes and cut them up, then place in a bowl of cold water with 1 teaspoon of vinegar to preserve the color.

  2. Chop the leek and add it to the pot with the artichokes and butter.

  3. Sweat the mixture in the butter for a few minutes without coloring.

Make the puree

  1. Add the stock and boil until tender.

  2. Rub the soup through a sieve and return it to the pot.

Finish and serve

  1. Heat the milk (half milk and half cream is good) and add it to the pot.

  2. Bring to a boil, add lemon juice to taste, and serve.

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. Jerusalem artichoke + leektop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together13 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

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

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

  3. Jerusalem artichoke + celerytop 3% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together75 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  4. Celery + lemontop 3% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together3,467 recipes

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

  5. Leek + celerytop 4% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together1,093 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

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, earthy flavor of the puree once cooked and sieved.
Milk
Adds richness and a smooth, creamy texture to the finished soup.
White stock
Cooks the artichokes until tender and forms the liquid base of the soup.
Butter
Adds fat and flavor when the vegetables are sweated gently at the start.
Leek
Adds a mild, sweet onion-like aroma that builds the soup's base flavor.

The step that matters

Sweat without coloring. Cooking the leek and artichokes gently in butter softens them and builds flavor. If the butter browns, it adds bitter notes and a darker color to what should be a pale, delicate puree.

Swap the celery

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

  1. Thymefits better
  2. Parsleyfits better
  3. Celerythe original
  4. Capersfits about as well

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

More artichoke puree recipes

Jerusalem 9 See all 10 →

You might also like

Lemon SauceLemon Sauce236 recipesCream of Celery SoupCream of Celery Soup113 recipesArtichoke SoupArtichoke Soup55 recipesLeek SoupLeek Soup31 recipes