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Artichoke Soup

A creamy soup made from Jerusalem artichokes, milk, bay leaves, sugar, white pepper, and sea salt, served with 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: Butter and bread are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 7% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 27,232 recipes. Both carry delta-decalactone, which smells sweet, creamy. The science ↓

Artichoke Soup

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the artichokes

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

  2. Boil the artichokes in minimal water until tender and they become a pulp, ensuring they do not burn by greasing the saucepan with butter.

  3. Pass the cooked artichokes through a wire sieve into a bowl.

Make the soup

  1. In a saucepan, heat the milk with the bay leaves.

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

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

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. Butter + breadtop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together27,232 recipes

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

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

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

  3. Milk + breadtop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together11,466 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-undecenal (sweet).

  4. Jerusalem artichoke + breadtop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together51 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl decanoate (grape, waxy).

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

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

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, starch and flavour of the soup when boiled to a pulp.
Milk
Adds moisture and a smooth, creamy texture to the sieved artichoke pulp.
Sugar
Adds sweetness that balances the earthy flavour of the artichokes.
Bay leaves
Infuse a subtle aromatic flavour into the warm milk.

The step that matters

Adding the egg yolks or cream. Egg yolks can curdle and turn grainy if the soup boils, so they must be added gradually and the soup kept hot but not boiling.

Swap the white pepper

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

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

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