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Chicoree, or Endive in Veloute

A dish of blanched endive served in a velouté sauce with croutons.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 ingredients
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Why it works: Endive and pepper work together. They rank in the top 10% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 308 recipes. Both carry nonanal, which smells fat, citrus. The science ↓

Chicoree, or Endive in Veloute

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the endive

  1. Remove the exterior leaves of the endive, leaving only the white part, soak it in water, and wash thoroughly.

  2. Add coarse sea salt to boiling water and submerge the endive to prevent it from turning black.

  3. Blanch the endive until tender, drain it in a sieve, place it in cold spring water, then strain and squeeze it dry.

Cook in sauce

  1. Chop the endive and place it in a stewpan with a good piece of butter, salt, and pepper.

  2. Add veloute sauce or stock and let it reduce until thick.

  3. Serve with croutons.

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

    Shared aroma: nonanal (fat, citrus).

  2. Butter + saucetop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together15,338 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethanol (alcoholic, ethereal).

  3. Endive + saucetop 19% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together129 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethanol (alcoholic, ethereal).

  4. Butter + peppertop 21% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together85,593 recipes

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

  5. Endive + buttertop 25% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together204 recipes

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

Butter and sauce barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 15,338 recipes: they work on texture and structure more than aroma.

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 gives its slightly bitter, tender texture.
Butter
Adds richness and a smooth, glossy mouthfeel to the cooked endive.
Veloute sauce
Provides a thick, creamy base that coats the endive and carries its flavour.

The step that matters

Adding salt to the boiling water. Endive discolours and turns dark when cut or cooked, and submerging it in salted boiling water helps prevent this darkening, keeping the white colour of the leaves.

Swap the endive

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

  1. Capsicumfits better
  2. Tomatofits better
  3. Mustardfits better
  4. Endivethe original

Fit is the average pairing score against butter, pepper, sauce. 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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