Name: Artichoke Salad
Ingredients: young globe artichokes; chopped parsley; chopped raw onion; capers; other herbs; oil; vinegar

Why it works: Artichoke and capers share more aroma than cooks usually use. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 77 recipes. Both carry coumarin, which smells sweet, hay. The science ↓

Artichoke Salad

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

Wash the artichokes carefully.
Serve them whole on a plate.
Provide plates of chopped parsley, raw onion, capers, and other herbs.
Dress the artichokes with oil and vinegar to taste.

Eat

Dip the leaves of the artichokes into the dressing, keeping the bottom for last.

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.

Artichoke + caperstop 1% of all pairs

Smell alikestrong

Cooked together77 recipes

Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).
Parsley + caperstop 1% of all pairs

Smell alikestrong

Cooked together1,550 recipes

Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).
Artichoke + parsleytop 3% of all pairs

Smell alikestrong

Cooked together524 recipes

Shared aroma: trans-2-hexenal (green, leafy).
Onion + caperstop 7% of all pairs

Smell alikestrong

Cooked together1,381 recipes

Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).
Parsley + oniontop 9% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together25,843 recipes

Shared aroma: 2,4-decadienal (seaweed).

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

What each ingredient does

Young globe artichokes: Provide the tender leaves and heart that form the body of the salad.
Oil: Adds richness and carries flavour across the leaves as a dressing.
Vinegar: Adds acidity that brightens the dressing and balances the oil.
Capers: Add a salty, sharp bite that contrasts with the mild artichoke.

Swap the onion

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (artichoke, parsley, capers, vinegar):

Shallotfits better
Kalefits better
Mustardfits better
Onionthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against artichoke, parsley, capers, vinegar. 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.