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Artichoke Soup

A savory soup made with bacon, celery, turnip, onion, artichokes, stock, milk or cream, and seasoned with salt, cayenne, and sugar.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 10 ingredients
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Artichoke Soup

Why it works: Turnip and artichoke match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 140 recipes. Both carry coumarin, which smells sweet, hay. The science ↓

Artichoke Soup

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the base

  1. Combine the bacon, butter, celery, turnip, and onion in a stewpan.

  2. Braise for 1 hour, stirring frequently.

Make the soup

  1. Add the sliced artichokes and 1 pint of stock to the stewpan.

  2. Cook gently until it becomes a smooth pulp.

  3. Stir in the remaining stock and season with salt, cayenne, and sugar.

  4. Simmer for 6 minutes.

  5. Pass the mixture through a strainer back into the stewpan.

  6. Simmer for another 6 minutes, skimming well.

  7. Stir in the boiling milk or cream.

Serve

  1. Serve with small pieces of bread fried in butter.

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.

Photo for illustrative purposes only · Contact us to use it

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. Turnip + artichoketop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together140 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  2. Celery + turniptop 2% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together4,418 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  3. Turnip + oniontop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together7,585 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  4. Celery + artichoketop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together183 recipes

    Shared aroma: nonanal (fat, citrus).

  5. Butter + milktop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together81,283 recipes

    Shared aroma: (z)-4-heptenal (biscuit, cream).

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

What each ingredient does

Artichokes
Provide the main flavour and, once cooked and strained, the body of the soup.
Butter
Softens the vegetables gently and carries flavour without browning them.
Celery
Adds aromatic depth to the braising base of the soup.
Onion
Builds savoury sweetness as it braises with the other vegetables.
Milk or cream
Adds richness and a smoother, rounder mouthfeel to the finished soup.

The step that matters

Cook gently until it becomes a smooth pulp. Gentle heat lets the artichokes and vegetables soften evenly without scorching on the base of the pan. Scorching gives a burnt flavour that cannot be removed, and a well-softened pulp passes through the strainer far more easily.

Swap the onion

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (ham, celery, turnip, butter, artichoke, milk, sugar):

  1. Leekfits better
  2. Mustardfits better
  3. Parsnipfits better
  4. Onionthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against ham, celery, turnip, butter, artichoke, milk, sugar. 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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