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Steaved Artichoke Bottoms

A dish of boiled artichoke bottoms served with fried bread and cullis or béchamel sauce.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 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 ↓

Steaved Artichoke Bottoms

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the artichokes

  1. Boil the artichokes until half cooked.

  2. Remove the leaves and choke, then trim the bottoms neatly.

Cook

  1. Place the bottoms in a stewpan and add the broth, salt, and lemon juice.

  2. Boil gently until fully cooked.

Serve

  1. When serving, wipe the bottoms dry and place them in the center of a dish.

  2. Surround with fried bread and pour cullis or béchamel sauce over the artichokes.

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. Artichoke + breadtop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together175 recipes

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

  3. Artichoke + saucetop 16% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together462 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethanol (alcoholic, ethereal).

  4. Lemon + breadtop 20% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together8,445 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-nonenal (fatty, green).

  5. Bread + saucetop 22% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together4,934 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

Artichokes
Form the tender base that carries the dish and absorbs the cooking liquid.
Broth
Adds moisture and savoury flavour as the bottoms cook gently.
Lemon juice
Adds acidity that brightens the flavour and helps keep the artichoke pale.
Cullis or béchamel sauce
Adds moisture and a smooth, rich coating over the finished dish.

The step that matters

Boil gently until fully cooked. Boiling hard can break up the delicate artichoke bottoms and toughen them. A gentle simmer cooks them evenly through to a tender texture without falling apart.

Swap the lemon

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

  1. Avocadofits better
  2. Lemonthe original
  3. Limefits less well
  4. Pumpkinfits less well

Fit is the average pairing score against artichoke, bread, sauce. 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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