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Endive a LA Creme

Creamed endive cooked in milk, butter, cream, and pepper, served on buttered toast.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 8 ingredients
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Why it works: Clove and pepper match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 5% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 17,451 recipes. Both carry ethyl octanoate, which smells fruity, wine. The science ↓

Endive a LA Creme

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare and cook

  1. Wash the endive or young cabbage.

  2. Simmer the endive in salted milk with the onion and a clove of garlic until tender.

  3. Remove the onion when the endive is cooked.

Finish and serve

  1. Chop the endive and mix with butter, cream, and pepper.

  2. Heat the mixture thoroughly and serve on buttered toast.

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. Clove + peppertop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together17,451 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl octanoate (fruity, wine).

  2. Milk + buttertop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together81,283 recipes

    Shared aroma: (z)-4-heptenal (biscuit, cream).

  3. Endive + clovetop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together59 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

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

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

  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

Endive or young cabbage
Forms the bulk of the dish and gives it a mild, slightly bitter vegetable flavor.
Milk
Cooks the greens gently and forms the creamy base of the dish.
Butter
Adds richness and a smooth, rounded mouthfeel.
Cream
Thickens the mixture slightly and adds richness and smoothness.
Onion
Flavors the simmering milk and is removed before serving.

The step that matters

Heat the mixture thoroughly. Milk and cream-based mixtures can scorch on the bottom or separate and turn grainy if boiled hard. Heating them gently over moderate heat, stirring often, keeps the sauce smooth and creamy.

Swap the endive

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (onion, clove, milk, butter, cream, pepper):

  1. Potatofits better
  2. Leekfits better
  3. Capsicumfits better
  4. Endivethe original

Fit is the average pairing score against onion, clove, milk, butter, cream, 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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