Skip to main content
Main

Artichoke Soup

A beef and veal stock with artichokes, rice flour thickening, finished with cream or milk.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 9 ingredients
Jump to recipe ↓
Artichoke Soup

Why it works: Flour and artichoke match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 6% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 466 recipes. Both carry isobutyraldehyde, which smells malty, green. The science ↓

Artichoke Soup

Ingredients

Directions

Make the stock

  1. Combine the beef, veal, and bones in a clean stewpan. Cover with cold water.

  2. Bring slowly to a boil. Add salt at boiling point.

  3. Remove any scum. Simmer very slowly for 4 hours.

  4. Strain the stock through a sieve. Remove all fat from the stock.

  5. Return the fat-free stock to a pan to boil.

Make the soup

  1. Mix rice flour with a little milk. Pour the mixture into the boiling stock. Stir for 3 minutes.

  2. Add the artichokes. Cook slowly until soft.

  3. Pass the soup through a sieve. Reheat the soup. Season with white pepper.

Serve

  1. Pour over cream or milk in a soup tureen. Stir gently.

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. Flour + artichoketop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together466 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  2. Rice + milktop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together7,374 recipes

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

  3. Rice + artichoketop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together90 recipes

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

  4. Beef + ricetop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together2,265 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-acetyl-1-pyrroline (popcorn, roasted).

  5. Beef + vealtop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together3,784 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2,6-nonadienal (cucumber, green).

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

What each ingredient does

Rice flour
Thickens the stock into a smooth, body-rich soup as it cooks.
Artichokes
Provide the main flavour and soften into the soup, adding body when sieved.
Shin of beef
Releases gelatin and savoury flavour into the stock during long, slow simmering.
Shank of veal
Adds gelatin and a delicate savoury body to the stock.
Cream or milk
Adds richness and a softer, mellow texture to the finished soup.

The step that matters

Simmer very slowly for 4 hours. Boiling vigorously makes the stock cloudy and greasy, while slow simmering keeps it clear and lets collagen from the meat and bones dissolve into a flavourful body.

Swap the white pepper

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (beef, veal, rice, flour, milk, artichoke, cream):

  1. Capersfits better
  2. Nutmegfits better
  3. Turmericfits better
  4. White pepperthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against beef, veal, rice, flour, milk, artichoke, cream. 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.

More artichoke soup recipes

Jerusalem 55Brown 3 See all 70 →

You might also like

Beef, Mutton, or Veal BrothBeef, Mutton, or Veal Broth6 recipesRoast BeefRoast Beef211 recipesBeef LoafBeef Loaf175 recipesCorned BeefCorned Beef87 recipes