Why it works: Lemon and pepper match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 3% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 27,047 recipes. Both carry trans-2-nonenal, which smells cardboard, fatty. The science ↓
To Stew Cardoons
Ingredients
Directions
Prepare
Wash the cardoons thoroughly.
Boil the cardoons in salted water until tender.
Make the stew
In a stewpan, combine the cardoons with gravy, lemon pickle, catsup, pepper, and salt.
Thicken the mixture with butter rolled in flour.
Serve
Serve in a vegetable dish.
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.
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Lemon + peppertop 3% of all pairsSmell alikestrongCooked together27,047 recipes
Shared aroma: trans-2-nonenal (cardboard, fatty).
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Cardoon + lemontop 5% of all pairsSmell alikestrongCooked together33 recipes
Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).
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Cardoon + flourtop 5% of all pairsSmell alikestrongCooked together24 recipes
Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).
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Butter + flourtop 12% of all pairsSmell alikelowCooked together124,287 recipes
Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).
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Cardoon + peppertop 14% of all pairsSmell alikemoderateCooked together31 recipes
Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).
Butter and flour barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 124,287 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
- Cardoons
- Form the main body of the dish, becoming tender when boiled.
- Butter
- Enriches the sauce and adds richness when rolled in flour.
- Flour
- Thickens the sauce when combined with butter and stirred in.
- Gravy
- Supplies the liquid and savory base for the stew.
- Lemon pickle
- Adds acidity and tangy flavor to the stew.
- Catsup
- Adds sweetness and tomato-based acidity to the 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.
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