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Endive, Stewed

Stewed endive cooked in broth with butter, lemon juice, sugar, and salt.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 ingredients
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Why it works: Endive and lemon match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 8% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 108 recipes. Both carry 1-octen-3-ol, which smells mushroom, earthy. The science ↓

Endive, Stewed

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the endive

  1. Wash the endive thoroughly to remove insects and decayed leaves.

  2. Boil water with a little salt and add the endive; cook for 10 minutes.

  3. Remove the endive and chop it finely.

Stew and serve

  1. In a stewpan, combine the chopped endive with the broth and bring to a boil.

  2. Add butter, lemon juice, sugar, and salt; mix well and simmer for 5 minutes.

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

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

  2. Butter + lemontop 16% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together41,227 recipes

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

  3. Butter + sugartop 17% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together98,233 recipes

    Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).

  4. Lemon + sugartop 18% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together53,532 recipes

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

  5. Endive + buttertop 25% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together204 recipes

    Shared aroma: trans-2-hexenal (green, leafy).

Lemon and sugar barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 53,532 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 softens into a tender, stewed texture.
Broth
Provides liquid for stewing and adds savory flavor to the endive.
Butter
Adds fat for richness and a smooth, rounded mouthfeel.
Lemon juice
Adds acidity that brightens the flavor and balances the bitterness of the endive.
Sugar
Adds a small amount of sweetness that softens the endive's bitter taste.

The step that matters

Boiling the endive before stewing. Endive is naturally bitter, and boiling it first draws out some of that bitterness. Skipping or shortening this step leaves the finished dish harsher in flavor.

Swap the endive

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

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

Fit is the average pairing score against butter, 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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