Name: Artichoke Cream
Ingredients: 6 tinned or freshly-boiled artichoke bottoms; ½ pint good creamy veloute; 2 oz grated Parmesan cheese; ¼ teaspoon coralline pepper; ⅓ cup sherry; 1 gill thick, stiffly whipped cream

Why it works: Parmesan cheese and sherry share more aroma than cooks usually use. They rank in the top 10% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 99 recipes. Both carry ethyl isobutyrate, which smells fruity, ethereal. The science ↓

Artichoke Cream

Ingredients

6 tinned or freshly-boiled artichoke bottoms
½ pint good creamy veloute
2 oz grated Parmesan cheese
¼ teaspoon coralline pepper
⅓ cup sherry
1 gill thick, stiffly whipped cream

Directions

Pound the artichoke bottoms with the creamy veloute.
Add grated Parmesan cheese and coralline pepper.
Mix in the sherry.
Rub the mixture through a sieve.
Combine with the whipped cream and mix well.

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.

Parmesan cheese + sherrytop 10% of all pairs

Smell alikestrong

Cooked together99 recipes

Shared aroma: ethyl isobutyrate (fruity, ethereal).
Artichoke + peppertop 10% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together1,170 recipes

Shared aroma: nonanal (fat, citrus).
Artichoke + parmesan cheesetop 12% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together326 recipes

Shared aroma: 1-octen-3-ol (mushroom, earthy).
Parmesan cheese + peppertop 14% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together5,322 recipes

Shared aroma: ethyl 2-methylbutyrate (fruity, apple).
Parmesan cheese + creamtop 17% of all pairs

Smell alikelow

Cooked together1,566 recipes

Shared aroma: gamma-decalactone (peach, creamy).

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

What each ingredient does

Artichoke bottoms: Provide the main body and flavour of the sauce once pounded smooth.
Veloute: Forms the creamy base that carries the other ingredients.
Parmesan cheese: Adds savoury, salty flavour and body to the sauce.
Sherry: Adds acidity and aromatic depth to the sauce.
Whipped cream: Lightens the texture and adds richness to the finished sauce.

“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.