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Cardoons, with Essenoe of Ham

Cardoons cooked with white wine, broth, salt, pepper, sugar, and reduced brown sauce flavored with ham essence.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 8 ingredients
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Why it works: Sugar and sauce match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 13% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 5,147 recipes. Both carry ethanol, which smells alcoholic, ethereal. The science ↓

Cardoons, with Essenoe of Ham

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Parboil and clean the cardoons.

Cook

  1. Place them in a flat saucepan with white wine and broth to cover.

  2. Season with salt, pepper, and sugar, then cook until the moisture is reduced and they are glazed.

Serve

  1. Transfer to a dish and pour over reduced brown sauce mixed with essence of ham.

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. Sugar + saucetop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together5,147 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethanol (alcoholic, ethereal).

  2. Cardoon + peppertop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together31 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  3. White wine + peppertop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together5,433 recipes

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

  4. Cardoon + saucetop 17% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together48 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethanol (alcoholic, ethereal).

  5. White wine + saucetop 21% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together819 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethanol (alcoholic, ethereal).

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

What each ingredient does

Cardoons
The main vegetable, which becomes tender through parboiling and then glazes as the liquid reduces.
White wine
Adds acidity and aroma to the cooking liquid, lightly flavouring the cardoons.
Reduced brown sauce
Adds savoury depth and body to the finished dish as a rich coating sauce.
Essence of ham
Adds concentrated savoury, smoky aroma to the brown sauce.

The step that matters

Reducing the cooking liquid until glazed. If the liquid is not reduced enough, the cardoons stay wet and watery; if reduced too far, they scorch or dry out. Cooking until the moisture has reduced lets the sugar and natural sugars concentrate and caramelise slightly, giving a glossy glaze.

“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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