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Artichoke Soup

A creamy soup made with boiled artichokes, stock, onion, and cream, seasoned with pepper and sea salt.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 ingredients
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Artichoke Soup

Why it works: Onion and artichoke match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 10% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 738 recipes. Both carry coumarin, which smells sweet, hay. The science ↓

Artichoke Soup

Ingredients

Directions

  1. Boil the artichokes in the stock with the onion until tender.

  2. Remove the onion and pass the artichokes through a wire sieve.

  3. Return the artichokes to the stock and add the cream.

  4. Boil for 3 to 4 minutes.

  5. Season with pepper and coarse sea salt to taste.

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. Onion + artichoketop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together738 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

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

    Shared aroma: nonanal (fat, citrus).

  3. Onion + peppertop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together68,474 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-isopropyl-3-methoxypyrazine (earthy, pea).

  4. Onion + creamtop 18% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together10,827 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-nonanone (fruity, floral).

  5. Cream + artichoketop 21% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together335 recipes

    Shared aroma: 1-octen-3-one (mushroom, metallic).

Onion and cream barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 10,827 recipes: they work on texture and structure more than aroma.

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

What each ingredient does

Artichokes
Their flesh is pushed through a sieve, thickening the stock and giving the soup its body.
White stock
Liquid that cooks the artichokes and forms the savoury base of the soup.
Cream
Adds richness and a smooth, silky mouthfeel to the finished soup.
Onion
Flavours the cooking stock with a mild aroma and is removed before sieving.

The step that matters

Boiling after adding the cream. Cream can separate or scorch when boiled hard or for too long. Keep the soup at a gentle simmer for the short time given so the texture stays smooth.

Swap the onion

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (cream, artichoke, pepper):

  1. Spinachfits better
  2. Turnipfits better
  3. Lettucefits better
  4. Onionthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against cream, artichoke, pepper. 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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