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Stewed Endive

A dish of boiled white‑heart endive seasoned with salt, pepper, nutmeg, lemon juice, and parsley.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 ingredients
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Why it works: Lemon and parsley match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 14,037 recipes. Both carry beta-phellandrene, which smells minty, terpene. The science ↓

Stewed Endive

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the endive

  1. Wash the endive carefully in salt and water to remove any insects.

  2. Boil the endive in slightly salted water until tender.

  3. Drain the endive.

  4. Extract excess water.

Season and serve

  1. Season with black pepper, salt, nutmeg, and lemon juice.

  2. Reserve one head of endive and boil it whole for garnish.

  3. Place the stewed endive on a dish.

  4. Sprinkle with chopped parsley.

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. Lemon + parsleytop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together14,037 recipes

    Shared aroma: beta-phellandrene (minty, terpene).

  2. Pepper + parsleytop 2% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together34,122 recipes

    Shared aroma: 4'-methylacetophenone (bitter almond).

  3. Pepper + lemontop 3% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together27,047 recipes

    Shared aroma: trans-2-nonenal (cardboard, fatty).

  4. Nutmeg + parsleytop 3% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together5,062 recipes

    Shared aroma: 4'-methylacetophenone (bitter almond).

  5. Endive + parsleytop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together107 recipes

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

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 carries the flavour of the seasonings.
Lemon juice
Adds acidity that brightens the mild, slightly bitter flavour of the endive.
Nutmeg
Adds warm aroma that complements the cooked greens.

The step that matters

Extract excess water. Boiled endive holds a lot of water, which dilutes seasoning and makes the dish soggy. Squeezing out the excess before seasoning keeps the flavour concentrated and the texture firm.

Swap the endive

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (pepper, nutmeg, lemon, parsley):

  1. Carrotfits better
  2. Shallotfits better
  3. Spinachfits better
  4. Endivethe original

Fit is the average pairing score against pepper, nutmeg, lemon, parsley. 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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