Name: To Dress Artichoke Bottoms with Eggs
Ingredients: artichoke bottoms; water; butter; coarse sea salt; hard-boiled egg yolks; melted butter; milk

Why it works: Butter and milk are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 7% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 81,283 recipes. Both carry (z)-4-heptenal, which smells biscuit, cream. The science ↓

To Dress Artichoke Bottoms with Eggs

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

Soak the dried artichoke bottoms overnight.
Boil the soaked artichoke bottoms in plenty of water with butter and salt until plump.

Assemble and serve

Place the artichoke bottoms on a serving dish.
Put a hard-boiled egg yolk in each artichoke bottom.
Pour melted butter made with milk over the artichoke bottoms.

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.

Butter + milktop 7% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together81,283 recipes

Shared aroma: (z)-4-heptenal (biscuit, cream).
Artichoke + buttertop 15% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together893 recipes

Shared aroma: trans-2-hexenal (green, leafy).
Butter + eggtop 17% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together118,967 recipes

Shared aroma: decanal (soap, orange peel).
Egg + milktop 18% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together88,785 recipes

Shared aroma: 2-nonenal (fatty, green).
Artichoke + eggtop 21% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together633 recipes

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

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

What each ingredient does

Artichoke bottoms: Form the base of the dish, becoming tender and plump when soaked and boiled.
Hard-boiled egg yolks: Provide a rich, creamy filling that sits inside each artichoke bottom.
Butter: Adds richness and fat, carrying flavor into the dish both in cooking and in the sauce.
Milk: Combined with melted butter to make a lighter, pourable sauce that moistens the dish.

“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.