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Endive

A French‑style endive dish cooked with celery, asparagus, and a butter‑flour sauce.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 12 ingredients
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Why it works: Endive and asparagus share more aroma than cooks usually use. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 33 recipes. Both carry 1-octen-3-ol, which smells mushroom, earthy. The science ↓

Endive

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the endive

  1. Soak the endive in salt water for 3 hours, then drain.

  2. Place the endive leaves one by one into a stewpan, reserving one head to boil whole.

  3. Add the white wine and cover the pan, cooking until tender.

  4. Incorporate the butter rolled in flour, shaking the pan until melted without boiling.

Cook the celery and asparagus

  1. In another pot, simmer the celery in water with mace and whole pepper for 20 minutes until tender.

  2. Chop the remaining asparagus and add it to the celery, simmering until the asparagus is done.

Assemble and serve

  1. Arrange the whole head of endive in the center of a dish and surround it with the celery and asparagus.

  2. Pour the celery liquor and sauce into the stewpan, season with salt and nutmeg.

  3. Stir in the beaten egg yolks and cream, cooking until thickened, then pour over the endive.

  4. 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.

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 + asparagustop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together33 recipes

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

  2. Celery + peppertop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together16,012 recipes

    Shared aroma: 4'-methylacetophenone (bitter almond).

  3. Endive + celerytop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together160 recipes

    Shared aroma: nonanal (fat, citrus).

  4. Celery + asparagustop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together378 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-methoxy-4-vinylphenol (clove, smoky).

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

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

What each ingredient does

Endive
Forms the main vegetable body of the dish, becoming tender when cooked gently in wine.
Butter
Adds richness and a silky texture to the sauce once melted with the flour.
Egg yolks
Thicken the sauce as they cook, giving it a smooth, custard-like body.
Cream
Adds richness and body to the sauce, softening its flavour.
Celery
Gives a mild, aromatic vegetable flavour to the liquor used in the sauce.
Asparagus
Adds tender texture and fresh vegetable flavour to the garnish around the endive.

The step that matters

Stir in the egg yolks and cream. Egg yolks thicken through gentle heat, and if the sauce gets too hot it can curdle or turn grainy. Cook slowly and stop once it coats a spoon.

Swap the mace

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (endive, white wine, butter, flour, celery, pepper, asparagus):

  1. Tarragonfits better
  2. Parsleyfits better
  3. Capersfits better
  4. Macethe original

Fit is the average pairing score against endive, white wine, butter, flour, celery, pepper, asparagus. 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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