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Endives Maître D'hôtel

A French dish of endives topped with a carrot and mushroom puree sauce, baked until golden.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 ingredients
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Why it works: Mushroom and butter are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 7% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 12,525 recipes. Both carry trans-2-decenal, which smells waxy, orange. The science ↓

Endives Maître D'hôtel

Ingredients

Directions

The book gives no oven temperature. The 400°F (200°C) in the steps was added when the recipe was transcribed, as a starting point.

Make the sauce

  1. Cook the carrots and mushrooms in water until tender.

  2. Pass the mixture through a sieve to create a puree.

  3. In a pan, melt the butter and add the puree.

  4. Stir in the flour and moisten with a little cooking water.

Bake and serve

  1. Cover the endives with the sauce and bake until golden in a 400°F (200°C) oven.

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. Mushroom + buttertop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together12,525 recipes

    Shared aroma: trans-2-decenal (waxy, orange).

  2. Flour + endivetop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together111 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  3. Carrot + endivetop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together76 recipes

    Shared aroma: nonanal (fat, citrus).

  4. Carrot + mushroomtop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together2,796 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-nonenal (fatty, green).

  5. Mushroom + endivetop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together44 recipes

    Shared aroma: 1-octen-3-ol (mushroom, earthy).

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

What each ingredient does

Carrots
Cooked and pureed to give the sauce body and a subtle sweetness.
Mushrooms
Cooked and pureed to add savoury depth and moisture to the sauce.
Butter
Melted to enrich the sauce with fat and carry flavour.
Flour
Stirred in to thicken the puree into a smooth, cohesive sauce.
Endives
Covered with the sauce and baked until golden, becoming tender and lightly browned.

The step that matters

Stir in the flour and moisten with a little cooking water. Flour needs to be cooked in fat to lose its raw taste and thicken evenly. Adding liquid gradually, in small amounts, helps prevent lumps and keeps the sauce smooth.

Swap the carrot

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (mushroom, butter, flour, endive):

  1. Shallotfits better
  2. Chivefits better
  3. Spinachfits better
  4. Carrotthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against mushroom, butter, flour, endive. 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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