Name: Artichokes
Ingredients: young artichokes; coarse sea salt; white-wine vinegar; 1-2 blades of mace; a few slices of ginger; 1 nutmeg

Why it works: Mace and nutmeg are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 4% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 6,557 recipes. Both carry myristicin, which smells spice, warm. The science ↓

Artichokes

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the artichokes

Boil young artichokes in strong salt water for 2-3 minutes.
Drain them on a hair sieve and let them cool.
Place the cooled artichokes in narrow-topped jars.

Pickle and seal

Boil enough white-wine vinegar to cover the artichokes with mace, ginger, and nutmeg.
Pour the hot vinegar over the artichokes and seal the jars tightly.

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.

Mace + nutmegtop 4% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together6,557 recipes

Shared aroma: myristicin (spice, warm).
Ginger + nutmegtop 5% of all pairs

Smell alikestrong

Cooked together3,324 recipes

Shared aroma: estragole (anise, licorice).
Artichoke + nutmegtop 5% of all pairs

Smell alikestrong

Cooked together156 recipes

Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).
Mace + gingertop 11% of all pairs

Smell alikelow

Cooked together2,152 recipes

Shared aroma: alpha-pinene (pine, turpentine).
Wine + vinegartop 12% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together3,493 recipes

Shared aroma: sotolon (curry, maple).

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

What each ingredient does

Young artichokes: Form the main body of the pickle, absorbing the vinegar and seasonings as they sit.
White-wine vinegar: Provides the acidity that preserves and sharpens the artichokes.
Coarse sea salt: Seasons the cooking water and firms the artichokes during the brief boil.

The step that matters

Pouring the hot vinegar over cooled artichokes. The vinegar must be hot but the artichokes cool, so the jars are not shocked or left with空 pockets of air. Sealing tightly while the vinegar is hot keeps the artichokes covered and limits spoilage from air exposure.

Swap the mace

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (artichoke, wine, vinegar, ginger, nutmeg):

Cinnamonfits better
Clovefits better
Allspicefits better
Macethe original

Fit is the average pairing score against artichoke, wine, vinegar, ginger, nutmeg. 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.