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Artichoke Soup

A creamy soup made with artichokes, milk, onions, bay leaves, sugar, and cream.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 ingredients
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Artichoke Soup

Why it works: Cream and sugar are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 9% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 43,450 recipes. Both carry 2,3-butanedione, which smells butter, sweet. The science ↓

Artichoke Soup

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the onions

  1. Peel and slice the onions, then soak them in cold water.

  2. Bring the onions to a boil quickly and boil for 3 minutes, then drain.

Make the soup

  1. Boil the artichokes in milk with the onions and sugar until tender.

  2. Pass the mixture through a sieve, then return it to the saucepan with bay leaves and pepper.

  3. Simmer for 30 minutes, then add the cream just before serving.

Serve

  1. Serve hot with 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.

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. Cream + sugartop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together43,450 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2,3-butanedione (butter, sweet).

  2. Artichoke + oniontop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together738 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  3. Artichoke + peppertop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,170 recipes

    Shared aroma: nonanal (fat, citrus).

  4. Onion + peppertop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together68,474 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-isopropyl-3-methoxypyrazine (earthy, pea).

  5. Milk + creamtop 18% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together29,399 recipes

    Shared aroma: delta-dodecalactone (sweet, creamy).

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

What each ingredient does

Artichokes
Provide the main body and flavour of the soup once boiled and sieved.
Milk
Cooks with the artichokes to form the creamy liquid base of the soup.
Onions
Add savoury depth and aroma to the soup base.
Cream
Adds richness and a smooth, silky texture when stirred in at the end.

The step that matters

Adding the cream just before serving. Cream held at a simmer for long can separate or turn grainy, and it thins the flavour if boiled hard. Adding it last keeps the soup smooth and rich.

Swap the onion

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

  1. Spinachfits better
  2. Capsicumfits better
  3. Asparagusfits better
  4. Onionthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against milk, artichoke, pepper, cream, sugar. 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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