Skip to main content
Main

Stewed Endive

A dish of boiled endive simmered in broth with sugar, lemon juice, and a butter‑flour thickener.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 ingredients
Jump to recipe ↓

Why it works: Endive and flour match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 8% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 111 recipes. Both carry isobutyraldehyde, which smells malty, green. The science ↓

Stewed Endive

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the endive

  1. Wash the endive thoroughly to remove insects.

  2. Remove the green part of the leaves and place the endive in boiling salted water.

  3. Cook for 10 minutes, then drain and chop finely.

Stew and finish

  1. In a stewpan, combine the chopped endive with the broth, a little salt, and the sugar.

  2. Boil until the endive is tender, checking by squeezing a piece between your fingers.

  3. Add a thickening of butter and flour and the lemon juice, then let the sauce boil and serve.

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. Endive + flourtop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together111 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  2. Endive + lemontop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together108 recipes

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

  3. Butter + flourtop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together124,287 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  4. Sugar + flourtop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together92,116 recipes

    Shared aroma: phenylacetaldehyde (hawthorne, honey).

  5. Lemon + buttertop 16% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together41,227 recipes

    Shared aroma: 3-hexenal (apple, fruity).

Butter and flour barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 124,287 recipes: they work on texture and structure more than aroma.

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

What each ingredient does

Endive
Forms the main body of the dish and, once cooked tender, gives it its soft texture.
Broth
Supplies the liquid that stews the endive and forms the base of the sauce.
Butter and flour
Form a roux that thickens the broth into a smooth, coating sauce.
Lemon juice
Adds acidity that brightens the flavour and balances the sweetness of the sugar.

The step that matters

Boil until the endive is tender. Endive must be cooked long enough to soften fully, since undercooked leaves stay bitter and fibrous. Testing by squeezing a piece shows when the texture is right.

Swap the endive

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

  1. Arrowrootfits better
  2. Shallotfits better
  3. Leekfits better
  4. Endivethe original

Fit is the average pairing score against lemon, sugar, butter, flour. 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.

You might also like

Lemon SauceLemon Sauce236 recipesTomato SoupTomato Soup526 recipesBrown BreadBrown Bread461 recipesMutton BrothMutton Broth292 recipes