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Puree of Endives

A smooth puree of cooked endives mixed with butter, salt, pepper, nutmeg, reduced Allemande or Cream sauce, and half-glaze.

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 ↓

Puree of Endives

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Prepare and cook the endives as directed in recipe No. 699.

  2. Chop the cooked endives finely.

Make the puree

  1. In a saucepan, combine the chopped endives with a piece of butter, and season with salt, pepper, and nutmeg.

  2. Stir over medium heat and add the reduced Allemande or Cream sauce.

  3. Rub the mixture through a fine sieve and return it to the saucepan to warm thoroughly.

  4. Add the half-glaze and another piece of butter, then serve.

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

    Shared aroma: nonanal (fat, citrus).

  5. Nutmeg + creamtop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together7,920 recipes

    Shared aroma: acetic acid (sour, vinegar).

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

What each ingredient does

Endives
Form the bulk of the puree and supply its mild, slightly bitter flavour.
Butter
Adds richness and a smooth, glossy mouthfeel to the puree.
Reduced allemande or cream sauce
Adds body and creaminess, helping the puree hold together and feel smooth.
Half-glaze
Deepens the savoury flavour and adds colour and body at the end.

The step that matters

Rub the mixture through a fine sieve. Pushing the cooked endives through a fine sieve breaks down fibres and removes any stringy or lumpy bits, so the puree comes out smooth. Rubbing too coarsely leaves a grainy texture that the cream sauce cannot hide.

Swap the endive

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

  1. Spinachfits better
  2. Potatofits better
  3. Capsicumfits better
  4. Endivethe original

Fit is the average pairing score against 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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