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Stewed Endive

A dish of boiled endive cooked with butter, flour, cream or broth, and lightly sweetened with sugar.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 5 ingredients
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Why it works: Butter and cream are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 8% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 41,516 recipes. Both carry delta-dodecalactone, which smells sweet, creamy. The science ↓

Stewed Endive

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the endive

  1. Remove the outer leaves from the endive and wash the endive well.

  2. Boil the endive in water for 15 minutes or until tender, then drain it.

  3. Chop the drained endive finely and season it with salt.

Make the sauce

  1. Melt the butter in a saucepan and mix in the flour until smooth.

  2. Add the chopped endive to the sauce and stir the mixture over heat.

  3. Gradually add the cream or broth and stir until the mixture is combined.

Finish and serve

  1. Sprinkle the dish with sugar, add a little butter, and 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. Butter + creamtop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together41,516 recipes

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

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  3. Cream + sugartop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together43,450 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2,3-butanedione (butter, sweet).

  4. Butter + flourtop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together124,287 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  5. Flour + sugartop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together92,116 recipes

    Shared aroma: phenylacetaldehyde (hawthorne, honey).

Butter and flour barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 124,287 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 body of the stew and provides its main texture and slightly bitter flavour.
Butter
Adds fat and richness, and carries flavour through the sauce.
Flour
Thickens the butter and cream or broth into a smooth sauce.
Cream or broth
Loosens the thickened base into a moist, creamy stew.
White sugar
Adds a little sweetness to balance the endive's bitterness.

The step that matters

Adding the cream or broth gradually. Adding liquid slowly into the butter and flour roux, while stirring, keeps the starch dispersed so the sauce stays smooth instead of forming lumps.

Swap the endive

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

  1. Arrowrootfits better
  2. Leekfits better
  3. Sweet potatofits better
  4. Endivethe original

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