Artichoke
It is good for a man to eat thistles, and to remember that he is an ass. But an artichoke is the best of thistles, and the man who enjoys it has the satisfaction of feeling that he is an ass of taste. There are several elaborate ways of dressing the artichoke the Barigoule way and the Lyonnese way, for example, which have little to recommend them but their elaboration. Each is a mountain of labour for a mouse of result. The result is not bad; but it is always melancholy to see waste and in art especially the pleasure of it is destroyed when we are made Asparagus conscious of effort. The Barigoule and Lyonnese receipts are frantic attempts to paint the lily and to perfume the violet. When a great cook brings the whole battery of his kitchen to bear upon a simple artichoke bottom, one is reminded of Victor Hugo's comparison: "It is as if the Deity were to bombard a lettuce with a thunderbolt." Depend upon it that the simplest way of dressing the artichoke is the best. Trim it, boil it in salt and water, and let it be eaten with oil and vinegar, with English sauce or with Holland sauce. There is a special receipt for these sauces when served with vegetables. Some French cooks, before sending the artichoke to table, are careful to remove the choke, or as they call it, the hay. For this purpose the artichoke must either be allowed to cool, or must be dipped in cold water, and heated again after the removal of the hay-which might too vividly remind us how much we are asses. That hay in the artichoke certainly raises a delicate question, and it must be left to the good feeling of cooks whether they will or will not send it up to table.
The instruction here amounts to a single line — trim, boil in salted water, serve with a sauce — surrounded by argument. The line is sound, but it leaves out the numbers.
- Choosing the artichokeKettner means the large globe artichoke, eaten leaf by leaf with the fleshy base as the prize. Pick heads that squeak when squeezed and whose leaves have not begun to open and brown at the tips.
- TrimmingCut off the stem flush, snap away the tough outer leaves, and take an inch off the top of the cone with a serrated knife so the sauce can get in. Rub the cut surfaces with lemon or drop the heads into acidulated water; cut artichoke blackens within minutes.
- Boiling timeThe original gives none. A large globe takes 30 to 45 minutes at a bare simmer, lid on, in well-salted water. It is done when an outer leaf pulls away with no resistance and a knife goes into the base easily.
- The chokeThe "hay" is the immature flower bristles above the base. Removing it before serving means cooling the artichoke, spreading the leaves, digging out the fuzz with a spoon and reheating — the fiddly sequence Kettner describes. Leaving it in is entirely normal; diners scrape it off the base themselves once the leaves are gone.
- English sauce and Holland sauceEnglish sauce at this period is most likely plain melted butter, sometimes thickened and sharpened with a little vinegar; Holland sauce is hollandaise, butter emulsified into egg yolk with acid. Kettner refers the reader to separate receipts for these sauces as served with vegetables. Either wants to be warm rather than hot, and hollandaise will split if held over direct heat.
- Barigoule and LyonneseThe two methods he dismisses are elaborate treatments: barigoule, artichokes braised with a stuffing generally including mushroom and ham or bacon; the Lyonnaise version likewise dressed and garnished. Neither is bad cooking, but both take a great deal of preparation to yield a few mouthfuls, which is his complaint.
- ServingOne large globe per person, with a bowl for discarded leaves and a small dish of sauce each. Artichokes are best eaten warm or at room temperature the same day; they hold badly and the flavour is often said to go metallic overnight.
Kettner's Book of the Table (1877) is the work of E. S. Dallas, a journalist and critic; it was published anonymously and takes its name from Auguste Kettner, the Soho restaurateur, and its manner — Victor Hugo quoted at a vegetable — is characteristic of the whole book. The globe artichoke is generally said to have reached English tables in the sixteenth century and was grown in kitchen gardens well before it became a restaurant vegetable; it is genuinely a thistle, Cynara cardunculus var. scolymus, eaten in the bud before it flowers, which is why the choke is fuzzy and why the base is the only substantial part. The joke about eating thistles and being an ass was already a commonplace by Dallas's day. His subject is the fashion for elaborate garnished vegetable dishes in the grand French kitchens of his time, against which he sets the plain boiled artichoke with butter or hollandaise, still a common way of eating it in France and Italy.