Home › The Waldorf Kitchen › Puree of Artichokes
Puree of Artichokes
Dress and cook some artichoke bottoms as for a garnish, and then when they are soft remove, drain and cut them up. Place in a saucepan with an equal bulk of bechamel sauce, glaze and reduce the liquor, rubbing the whole through a fine sieve into a basin, mixing in a little hot cream and butter, and serve.
A one-paragraph professional note rather than a recipe in the modern sense: Oscar assumes you already have artichoke bottoms cooked and béchamel standing by. The finished purée is a thick vegetable garnish or side, not a soup.
- Artichoke bottomsLarge globe artichokes, stripped of leaves and choke, leaving the fleshy base. Figure one bottom per person as a side; frozen or good-quality jarred bottoms, well drained and rinsed, are an honest substitute for the twenty minutes of trimming.
- "Cook as for a garnish"In a French-trained kitchen this would usually mean simmering in a blanc — water with a little flour and lemon juice whisked in, plus salt — which keeps the bottoms pale rather than grey. Simmer 15–25 minutes until a knife slides through with no resistance.
- Equal bulk of béchamelMeasured by volume, not weight, and it should be a fairly stiff béchamel; a thin one will not reduce to a purée that holds its shape on the spoon.
- GlazeMost likely meat glaze, i.e. veal or chicken stock reduced to a syrup. A tablespoon of reduced stock or a teaspoon of commercial demi-glace does the job. Without it the purée reads as bland dairy.
- Rubbing through a sieveThe hinge of the dish. Artichoke has coarse fibre that a blender chops rather than removes, so pass the purée through a fine sieve or drum sieve even if you have processed it first. Skip this and the texture is stringy.
- Cream and butter at the endAdd them off the heat, warm, and stir just until absorbed. Hard boiling after this point thins what you spent the reduction building and can make the butter separate out.
- Yield and servingThe recipe gives no quantities; work to equal volumes of artichoke and béchamel and scale to the number you are feeding. Serve hot under roast lamb, veal or poultry, or as a bed for poached eggs.
Oscar Tschirky's book catalogues the working repertoire of a large American hotel kitchen run on French lines, and this entry reads exactly like a line cook's aide-mémoire: no quantities, no times. Purées of this kind — a vegetable cooked soft, bound with a mother sauce, sieved and mounted with cream and butter — were a standing category in the Escoffier-era brigade, spooned out as garniture beneath roasts and entrées. Artichoke bottoms in particular were prized as much for their shape as their flavour. The dish also shows how thoroughly the Waldorf kitchen at the turn of the century assumed a French vocabulary; glaze, bechamel and "as for a garnish" are all shorthand for the reader who has already worked a line.