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Stewed Endive

A savory dish of boiled endive simmered in broth, thickened with butter, flour, lemon juice, and sugar.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 8 ingredients
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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

Oven, in the book's wordsA moderate oven

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the endive

  1. Wash the endive thoroughly to remove insects.

  2. Remove the green part of the leaves.

  3. Put the endive into boiling salted water and let it simmer for 10 minutes.

  4. Drain the endive until no water remains and chop it finely.

Stew and finish

  1. In a stew-pan, combine the chopped endive and broth.

  2. Add a little salt and a lump of sugar, and boil until tender.

  3. Add a thickening of butter and flour along with the lemon juice.

  4. Let the sauce boil briefly 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. Flour + sugartop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together92,116 recipes

    Shared aroma: phenylacetaldehyde (hawthorne, honey).

  5. Butter + lemontop 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, softening as it stews into a tender mass.
Butter
Combines with flour to form a thickening roux that gives the sauce body and richness.
Flour
Thickens the broth into a smooth sauce when cooked with butter.
Broth
Provides the liquid that stews the endive and forms the base of the sauce.
Lemon juice
Adds acidity that brightens the flavor and balances the sweetness and richness.

The step that matters

Add the butter and flour thickening. Flour must be cooked with the fat and liquid long enough to lose its raw taste and to thicken evenly; adding it lumpy or without stirring can leave clumps in the sauce.

Swap the endive

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

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

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