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To Cook Burr Artichokes

A dish of boiled burr artichokes served with drawn butter flavored with vinegar or tartare sauce.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 5 ingredients
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Why it works: Butter and sauce are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 15% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 15,338 recipes. Both carry ethanol, which smells alcoholic, ethereal. The science ↓

To Cook Burr Artichokes

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare and cook

  1. Wash the artichokes in salted water.

  2. Boil the artichokes in water until you can easily pull off each leaf.

  3. Sprinkle a little salt over the artichokes.

Serve

  1. Serve with drawn butter flavored with vinegar or tartare sauce.

  2. Dip each leaf in the sauce before eating.

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. Butter + saucetop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together15,338 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethanol (alcoholic, ethereal).

  2. Artichoke + buttertop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together893 recipes

    Shared aroma: trans-2-hexenal (green, leafy).

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

    Shared aroma: ethanol (alcoholic, ethereal).

  4. Artichoke + vinegartop 17% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together381 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  5. Butter + vinegartop 23% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together13,513 recipes

    Shared aroma: isoamyl acetate (banana, pear).

Butter and sauce barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 15,338 recipes: they work on texture and structure more than aroma.

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

What each ingredient does

Young burr artichokes
Boiling softens the tender base of each leaf so it pulls away easily.
Drawn butter
Adds richness and fat that carries the flavor of the artichoke.
Vinegar
Adds acidity that brightens the flavor of the butter.

The step that matters

Boil until each leaf pulls off easily. Heat softens the tough leaf bases. If the artichokes are underboiled, the leaves stay firm and cling, making them hard to pull off and eat. Check by testing a leaf before draining.

“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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