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Endive, Ft LA FranQaLso

Boiled endive served in a butter and broth sauce with nutmeg.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 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 ↓

Endive, Ft LA FranQaLso

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the endive

  1. Wash and boil the endive until tender.

Make the sauce

  1. Chop the endive finely and place it in a stewpan with the broth.

  2. Boil over medium heat until the sauce is reduced.

  3. Add the butter, pepper, salt, and a small amount of grated nutmeg.

  4. Mix well and bring to a boil before serving hot.

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

    Shared aroma: nonanal (fat, citrus).

  4. Butter + nutmegtop 16% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together24,377 recipes

    Shared aroma: eucalyptol (eucalyptus, herbal).

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

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

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, once chopped and reduced, gives it body and a mild bitterness.
Broth
Provides the liquid that is reduced into the sauce, carrying flavour and setting its consistency.
Butter
Adds fat and richness, giving the sauce a smooth, rounded texture and mouthfeel.

The step that matters

Adding the butter to the reduced sauce. Butter should be stirred in off the heat or over low heat and emulsified gradually. Adding it to a boiling sauce can make it separate, leaving the sauce greasy instead of smooth.

Swap the endive

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

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

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