Skip to main content
Main

Chicory with Cream

A boiled chicory dish finished with butter, sugar, nutmeg, flour, cream, and egg yolks, garnished with hard‑boiled eggs.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 11 ingredients
Jump to recipe ↓

Why it works: Butter and cream are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 8% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 41,516 recipes. Both carry delta-dodecalactone, which smells sweet, creamy. The science ↓

Chicory with Cream

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the chicory

  1. Wash the chicory and boil it in a large kettle of salted water for 30 minutes.

  2. Drain and soak in cold water for 5 minutes, then drain again and press gently until dry.

Make the creamed chicory

  1. Chop the chicory finely and place it in a saucepan with butter, sugar, salt, and nutmeg.

  2. Sprinkle the flour over the mixture and stir well.

  3. Add the thick cream and heat until boiling, then remove from heat.

  4. Beat the egg yolks until light, mix in 2 tablespoons of cream, and stir into the chicory mixture.

  5. Transfer to a heated dish and garnish with hard-boiled eggs before serving.

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. Butter + creamtop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together41,516 recipes

    Shared aroma: delta-dodecalactone (sweet, creamy).

  2. Nutmeg + flourtop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together18,623 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  3. Chicory + flourtop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together47 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  4. Sugar + creamtop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together43,450 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2,3-butanedione (butter, sweet).

  5. Chicory + nutmegtop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together9 recipes

    Shared aroma: maltol (caramel, sweet).

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

What each ingredient does

Chicory
Forms the main bulk of the dish, and its texture becomes soft and creamy once cooked and chopped.
Butter
Adds richness and fat that carries flavour and gives the chicory a smooth mouthfeel.
Flour
Thickens the cream and chicory mixture so it holds together rather than running loose.
Thick cream
Adds moisture and richness, and body when heated to a boil with the thickened mixture.
Egg yolks
Enrich and bind the mixture, helping it set to a creamy, custard-like texture.

The step that matters

Stirring the egg yolks into the chicory mixture. Egg yolks can curdle or scramble if the mixture is too hot when they go in. Removing the pan from heat before adding the beaten yolks, as the method does, helps keep the sauce smooth and creamy.

“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

Tomato SoupTomato Soup526 recipesBrown BreadBrown Bread461 recipesMutton BrothMutton Broth292 recipesYorkshire PuddingYorkshire Pudding264 recipes