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Artichoke Bottoms, Spanish Style

A Spanish-style dish of cooked artichoke bottoms served with a reduced sauce of veal broth, wine, lemon, Espagnole, tomato, butter, and parsley.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 11 ingredients
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Why it works: Artichoke and lemon match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 2% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 636 recipes. Both carry 1-octen-3-ol, which smells mushroom, earthy. The science ↓

Artichoke Bottoms, Spanish Style

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Trim the artichokes as instructed in a previous recipe.

  2. Place the trimmed artichokes in a deep flat saucepan lined with fat pork.

Cook the artichokes

  1. Cover the artichokes with veal broth, white wine, and lemon juice.

  2. Season with coarse sea salt and black pepper, then cover and cook slowly until tender.

  3. Remove the artichoke bottoms and place them on a plate.

Make the sauce and serve

  1. Strain the cooking liquid and reduce it over high heat.

  2. Add Espagnole sauce and tomato sauce to the reduced liquid.

  3. Once thickened, remove from heat and stir in lemon juice, butter, and chopped parsley.

  4. Pour the sauce over the artichoke bottoms before serving.

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 + lemontop 2% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together636 recipes

    Shared aroma: 1-octen-3-ol (mushroom, earthy).

  2. Lemon + peppertop 3% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together27,047 recipes

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

  3. Pepper + tomatotop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together17,923 recipes

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

  4. Artichoke + tomatotop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together354 recipes

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

  5. Pork + tomatotop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together4,843 recipes

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

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

What each ingredient does

Artichokes
Form the main body of the dish, becoming tender during slow cooking.
Fat pork
Lines the pan, adding savoury fat and flavour to the cooking liquid and artichokes.
Veal broth
Provides the liquid that cooks the artichokes and forms the base of the sauce.
White wine
Adds acidity and aroma to the cooking liquid, which is reduced into the sauce.
Espagnole sauce
Adds body and rich savoury flavour to the thickened sauce.
Butter
Enriches the finished sauce, adding richness and a glossy texture.

The step that matters

Reducing the cooking liquid. Reducing over high heat concentrates flavour and thickens the liquid into a sauce. If it is under-reduced the sauce will be thin and weak; if over-reduced it can turn salty and sticky, so watch it closely until it coats a spoon.

“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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