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Artichoke Soup

A soup made with bacon or ham, celery, turnip, butter, artichokes, milk or cream, stock, 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

  1. Cut the bacon and vegetables into thin slices.

  2. Wash and peel the artichokes, then slice them thinly.

Make the soup

  1. In a stewpan, combine the bacon, vegetables, and butter.

  2. Cook for 30 minutes, stirring well, without letting them color.

  3. Add the artichokes to the stewpan along with the boiling milk or cream.

  4. Season with salt, cayenne, and sugar.

  5. Pour in the white stock and simmer until the artichokes are tender.

  6. Blend until smooth and serve hot.

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

    Shared aroma: nonanal (fat, citrus).

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

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

  5. Butter + artichoketop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together893 recipes

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

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 flavor of the soup once simmered and blended.
Butter
Adds fat and richness, carrying flavor as the bacon and vegetables cook gently.
Celery
Adds aromatic flavor to the base as it cooks slowly in butter.
Milk or cream
Adds moisture and creaminess, giving the blended soup a smooth, rich texture.
White stock
Supplies the liquid that simmers the artichokes until tender and forms the soup body.

The step that matters

Cook the vegetables without coloring them. Gentle cooking in butter softens and flavors the vegetables while keeping them pale. Browning would make the soup taste harsher and change its color.

Swap the celery

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

  1. Capersfits better
  2. Cinnamonfits better
  3. Nutmegfits better
  4. Celerythe original

Fit is the average pairing score against ham, 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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