Skip to main content
Main

Stewed Endive

A dish of boiled endive simmered in stock, thickened with flour and butter, finished with lemon juice and sugar.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 ingredients
Jump to recipe ↓

Why it works: Endive and flour match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 8% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 111 recipes. Both carry isobutyraldehyde, which smells malty, green. The science ↓

Stewed Endive

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the endive

  1. Inspect the endive for insects and wash thoroughly in plenty of water.

  2. Place the endive in slightly salted boiling water for 15 minutes.

  3. Drain and press out all the water, then chop the endive very fine.

Stew and thicken

  1. In a stew pan, combine the chopped endive with 2 cups of good stock.

  2. Boil until the endive is perfectly tender.

  3. Thicken the gravy by mixing 2 tablespoons of flour with 1 tablespoon of butter until smooth.

  4. Add the flour mixture to the stew, along with 1 tablespoon of lemon juice and a small lump of sugar.

  5. Boil briefly 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. Endive + flourtop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together111 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  2. Endive + lemontop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together108 recipes

    Shared aroma: 1-octen-3-ol (mushroom, earthy).

  3. Flour + buttertop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together124,287 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

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

    Shared aroma: phenylacetaldehyde (hawthorne, honey).

  5. Butter + lemontop 16% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together41,227 recipes

    Shared aroma: 3-hexenal (apple, fruity).

Flour and butter 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 main body of the stew and, once chopped and simmered, gives it its texture.
All-purpose flour
Thickens the stock into a smooth gravy when cooked with the butter.
Butter
Combines with the flour to form a roux that helps thicken the gravy smoothly.
Lemon juice
Adds acidity that brightens the flavour of the stewed endive.

The step that matters

Mixing the flour and butter until smooth. Flour added directly to hot liquid clumps. Working it into the butter first lets the starch disperse evenly, so the gravy thickens without lumps.

Swap the endive

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

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

Fit is the average pairing score against flour, butter, lemon, 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.

You might also like

Lemon SauceLemon Sauce236 recipesTomato SoupTomato Soup526 recipesBrown BreadBrown Bread461 recipesMutton BrothMutton Broth292 recipes