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Puree of Artichoke a LA Crame

A creamy artichoke puree made with celery, turnip, onion, butter, milk, sugar, salt, stock, and cream, served with fried croutons.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 12 ingredients
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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 ↓

Puree of Artichoke a LA Crame

Ingredients

Directions

Make the base

  1. Melt the butter in a stewpan.

  2. Add the chopped celery, sliced turnip, and sliced onion, and stir continuously for 15 minutes.

  3. Add the sliced artichokes, milk, white sugar, coarse sea salt, and white stock.

  4. Simmer until the vegetables are soft.

Puree and finish

  1. Strain the mixture.

  2. Beat the vegetables through a wire sieve and then a fine sieve.

  3. Return the puree to the stock.

  4. Add the heavy cream and simmer for 5 minutes.

  5. Season with salt to taste.

  6. Serve with fried croutons.

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. 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 body and flavour of the puree once cooked and sieved.
Butter
Adds fat and richness, and helps soften the vegetables gently at the start.
Heavy cream
Adds fat and a smooth, velvety texture to the finished puree.
Milk
Adds moisture and mild sweetness, rounding out the vegetable liquid.
Onion
Adds aromatic sweetness and depth as it softens in the butter.

The step that matters

Stir the celery, turnip and onion in butter for 15 minutes. Cooking the vegetables slowly in fat softens them and builds sweetness without browning. Too much heat can scorch the butter and bring bitter flavour into the puree.

Swap the onion

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

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

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

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