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Stewed Endive

A simple stew of endive simmered in broth or milk and thickened with potato flour, finished with lemon juice.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 5 ingredients
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Why it works: Endive and flour match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 8% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 111 recipes. Both carry isobutyraldehyde, which smells malty, green. The science ↓

Stewed Endive

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the endive

  1. Choose a fine white head of endive, wash, and pick it.

  2. Pour boiling water over the endive and let it sit for 10 minutes.

  3. Squeeze the endive dry and chop it.

Stew and finish

  1. In a stewpan, combine the chopped endive, salt, and broth or milk.

  2. Stew the endive until tender.

  3. Add enough potato flour to thicken the sauce.

  4. Before serving, stir in a little lemon juice.

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 + flourtop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together111 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

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

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

  3. Endive + potatotop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together41 recipes

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

  4. Milk + potatotop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together3,611 recipes

    Shared aroma: (e,z)-2,6-nonadienal (cucumber, melon).

  5. Potato + lemontop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together2,230 recipes

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

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 becomes tender and soft as it stews.
Broth or milk
Provides the liquid that becomes the sauce and keeps the endive moist while it cooks.
Potato flour
Thickens the cooking liquid into a smoother, more cohesive sauce.
Lemon juice
Adds acidity that brightens the flavour and balances the richness of the sauce.

The step that matters

Stew the endive until tender. Endive turns tender and mellow only with gentle, sustained heat in liquid. Stopping too early leaves it bitter and fibrous, while boiling hard can break it down unevenly.

Swap the lemon

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (endive, milk, potato, flour):

  1. Raisinfits better
  2. Avocadofits better
  3. Cherryfits about as well
  4. Lemonthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against endive, milk, potato, flour. 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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