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Artichoke Soup

A creamy soup made from stewed artichokes, almonds, egg yolks, and veal broth, seasoned with salt, cayenne, thyme, and parsley.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 14 ingredients
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Artichoke Soup

Why it works: Artichoke and almond share more aroma than cooks usually use. They rank in the top 4% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 44 recipes. Both carry nonanal, which smells fat, citrus. The science ↓

Artichoke Soup

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the artichokes

  1. Clean the bottoms from the leaves and choke of the artichokes and soak them in milk for 1 hour.

  2. Stew the soaked artichokes gently with butter and flour until tender.

  3. Remove the artichokes, mash them, and rub through a fine sieve.

  4. Simmer the puree with young onions, thyme, and parsley over low heat.

Make the soup

  1. In a mortar, pound the blanched almonds, hard-boiled yolks, and sugar.

  2. Add the mixture to the veal broth and season with salt and cayenne pepper.

  3. Heat the soup for a few minutes before serving.

Alternative method

  1. Alternatively, cut artichokes and boil them gently in rich stock until tender.

  2. Pass the cooked artichokes through a sieve and mix with cream to thicken the soup.

  3. Combine with the stock and warm without boiling.

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. Artichoke + almondtop 4% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together44 recipes

    Shared aroma: nonanal (fat, citrus).

  2. Flour + almondtop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together8,673 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  3. Artichoke + flourtop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together466 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  4. Milk + buttertop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together81,283 recipes

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

  5. Butter + almondtop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together9,245 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2,3-pentanedione (butter, sweet).

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 the body of the puree once mashed and sieved.
Butter
Adds richness and carries flavour when the artichokes are stewed.
All-purpose flour
Thickens the artichokes during stewing, helping the puree hold body.
Blanched sweet almonds
Pounded into the mixture to add body, richness and a nutty flavour.
Hard-boiled egg yolks
Pounded with the almonds to enrich and thicken the soup.
Veal broth
Forms the liquid base of the soup and carries its savoury flavour.

The step that matters

Warming the soup without boiling. Once egg yolks are in the soup, boiling can cause them to curdle and turn grainy, and it can break the smooth texture the puree and almonds give. Keep the heat gentle and steady.

Swap the almond

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (artichoke, milk, butter, flour, egg, sugar, veal):

  1. Almondthe original
  2. Chestnutfits about as well
  3. Pistachiofits less well
  4. Lentilsfits less well

Fit is the average pairing score against artichoke, milk, butter, flour, egg, sugar, veal. 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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