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Endive

Boiled endives served with sorrel leaves, butter, pepper, salt, and a little rich gravy.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 ingredients
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Why it works: Endive and sorrel share more aroma than cooks usually use. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 60 recipes. Both carry coumarin, which smells sweet, hay. The science ↓

Endive

Ingredients

Directions

Boil

  1. Separate the leaves of the endives and boil them in two waters to extract the bitterness.

  2. If still bitter, use a third water.

  3. Ten minutes before they are ready, add the sorrel leaves.

  4. Once soft, strain the endives and return them to the saucepan.

Finish and serve

  1. Add the butter, season with pepper and salt, and add a little rich gravy.

  2. Shake well over the fire and 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 + sorreltop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together60 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  2. Endive + walnuttop 3% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together39 recipes

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

  3. Sorrel + walnuttop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together10 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  4. Sorrel + peppertop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together419 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  5. Endive + peppertop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together308 recipes

    Shared aroma: nonanal (fat, citrus).

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

What each ingredient does

Endives
Form the main body of the dish, becoming soft and tender when boiled.
Sorrel leaves
Add a sharp, tangy flavour that complements the endives.
Butter
Adds richness and a smooth, glossy mouthfeel to the finished dish.
Rich gravy
Contributes savoury depth and moisture to the endives.

The step that matters

Changing the water to remove bitterness. Bitter compounds in endives dissolve into boiling water, so a fresh change of water is needed if the first two are not enough to make them mild. Testing for bitterness before serving keeps the flavour balanced.

Swap the walnut

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (endive, sorrel, butter, pepper):

  1. Lentilsfits better
  2. Almondfits about as well
  3. Walnutthe original
  4. Beansfits about as well

Fit is the average pairing score against endive, sorrel, butter, pepper. 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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