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Endives, German Style

A creamy dish of sautéed endives cooked with butter, flour, and cream, seasoned with salt, pepper, and nutmeg.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 ingredients
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Why it works: Endive and nutmeg share more aroma than cooks usually use. They rank in the top 6% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 47 recipes. Both carry coumarin, which smells sweet, hay. The science ↓

Endives, German Style

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Prepare the endives as instructed previously.

Make the sauce

  1. Melt butter in a pan.

  2. Add flour and cook until light brown, stirring well.

Cook and serve

  1. Add the prepared endives.

  2. Season with salt, pepper, and nutmeg.

  3. Mix well and gradually add the cream or milk.

  4. Serve immediately.

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 + nutmegtop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together47 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  2. Pepper + nutmegtop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together13,015 recipes

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

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

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

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  5. Flour + nutmegtop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together18,623 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

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

What each ingredient does

Endives
Form the main body of the dish, softening into tender pieces as they cook in the sauce.
Flour
Thickens the butter and cream mixture into a smooth sauce, and browning adds a nutty flavor.
Butter
Provides fat for cooking the flour and adds rich flavor to the sauce.
Cream or milk
Adds moisture and creaminess, giving the thickened sauce a smooth, rich texture.

The step that matters

Adding the cream or milk gradually. Flour cooked in butter forms a thickening base. Adding liquid slowly and stirring well lets the starch disperse evenly, which helps prevent lumps and keeps the sauce smooth.

Swap the endive

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

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

Fit is the average pairing score against flour, butter, pepper, nutmeg, cream. 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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