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Artichokes, French, Plain Boiled

Boiled artichokes seasoned with salt, pepper, and savory herbs, served with optional butter sauce.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 5 ingredients
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Why it works: Artichoke and pepper are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 10% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 1,170 recipes. Both carry nonanal, which smells fat, citrus. The science ↓

Artichokes, French, Plain Boiled

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Soak the artichokes upside down in salted water to remove insects.

  2. Trim the ends of the leaves and stalk, removing hard leaves from the bottom.

Boil

  1. Place the artichokes in a saucepan of boiling water, nearly covering them.

  2. Add salt, pepper, and savory herbs to the water.

  3. Boil until tender, checking doneness by pulling out a leaf.

Drain and serve

  1. Drain upside down to remove excess water.

  2. Serve with a sauce like butter sauce or sauce Allemande.

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

    Shared aroma: nonanal (fat, citrus).

  2. Artichoke + buttertop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together893 recipes

    Shared aroma: trans-2-hexenal (green, leafy).

  3. Pepper + buttertop 21% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together85,593 recipes

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

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

What each ingredient does

Artichokes
The main vegetable, cooked whole until the leaves and base become tender.
Butter
Adds richness and fat to the optional sauce served with the artichokes.

The step that matters

Boil until tender, checking by pulling out a leaf. Overcooking makes artichoke leaves mushy and dull in flavour, while undercooking leaves the base firm and the leaves tough. Pulling a leaf lets you test tenderness without guessing, since the leaf should slip out easily when done.

“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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