Name: Chicory
Ingredients: 1 lb chicory; Salt; Water; 2 tablespoons melted butter

Why it works: Chicory and butter work together. They rank in the top 29% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 55 recipes. Both carry maltol, which smells caramel, sweet. The science ↓

Chicory

Ingredients

1 lb chicory
Salt
Water
2 tablespoons melted butter

Directions

Prepare

Wash the chicory well in salted water.
Put it into a saucepan of cold water and bring to a boil.
Strain and rinse the chicory in cold water.

Cook and serve

Place it in boiling salted water and boil until tender.
Drain thoroughly and place on a slice of well-buttered toast.
Pour melted butter sauce over the chicory 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.

Chicory + buttertop 29% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together55 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 body of the dish, becoming tender when boiled.
Melted butter: Adds richness and fat, coating the chicory and softening its bitter edge.

“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.