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Endive and Eggs

A dish of sautéed endive topped with poached eggs, seasoned with butter, ketchup, salt, and pepper.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 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 ↓

Endive and Eggs

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the endive

  1. Carefully pick and wash the endive in two waters.

  2. Pour boiling water over the endive to remove the bitter taste.

  3. Strain the endive.

  4. Place the endive in cold water for about 10 minutes.

  5. Squeeze the endive dry.

  6. Chop the endive finely.

Cook the endive

  1. In a saucepan, combine the chopped endive with the stock.

  2. Season the mixture with salt, pepper, and ketchup.

  3. Boil the mixture until tender.

  4. Drain the stock.

  5. Beat the endive with the butter until well combined.

Serve

  1. Arrange the mixture in a flat mold on a hot dish.

  2. Top with nicely poached eggs before serving.

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. Egg + buttertop 17% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together118,967 recipes

    Shared aroma: decanal (soap, orange peel).

  3. Pepper + buttertop 21% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together85,593 recipes

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

  4. Butter + ketchuptop 24% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together2,784 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethanol (alcoholic, ethereal).

  5. Pepper + ketchuptop 24% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together3,207 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethanol (alcoholic, ethereal).

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

What each ingredient does

Endive
Forms the bulk of the dish and becomes soft and tender when boiled.
Butter
Adds fat and richness, making the chopped endive smooth and creamy when beaten.
Eggs
Provide richness and a soft, runny yolk that pairs with the endive.
Lemco
Adds savory meat-extract flavour to the stock that the endive cooks in.

The step that matters

Boil the mixture until tender. Boiling the endive long enough softens its fibres so it blends smoothly with the butter. Stopping early leaves it fibrous and coarse in texture.

Swap the endive

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

  1. Capsicumfits better
  2. Shallotfits better
  3. Chivefits better
  4. Endivethe original

Fit is the average pairing score against egg, pepper, butter, ketchup. 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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