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Endive, Dressed, for Second Course
Use salted water plentifully for this vegetable. Plunge the heads, after removing the green leaves, into it. When thoroughly free from grit and insects, boil quickly, drain, and finely chop them. Put a pint of good stock or veal gravy into a stewpan, with half a dozen heads so prepared; add a tea-spoonful of pounded sugar and a little salt, and stew till tender. When ready to serve, thicken with butter and flour, and stir in a table-spoonful of lemon-juice, or add a little Espagnole sauce, and serve with a fricandeau of veal; or with poached eggs on the top. Time, half an hour to boil; about five minutes to simmer in gravy. Probable cost, 1d. to 2d. per head. Sufficient for three or four persons.
A straightforward braised vegetable dish from the era when a cooked salad green was a legitimate side for the second course. The main thing to adjust is the boiling time.
- Which endiveIn a British book of this date, "endive" means the frizzy or broad-leaved Cichorium endivia — curly endive or escarole — not the pale forced chicons sold today as Belgian endive. Escarole is the closest match and behaves the same way in a braise.
- The salted water is for insectsThe heavy salting is a soak, not a seasoning step. Curly endive holds grit and insects deep in the frilled leaves, and time in salted water floats them out; the recipe simply says to keep the heads in it until "thoroughly free from grit and insects", without giving a time. Rinse in fresh water afterwards or the finished dish may come out too salty.
- Half an hour is far too longBoiling chopped endive for thirty minutes gives grey mush. Five to eight minutes in plenty of boiling water is enough to soften the leaves and take the hard edge off the bitterness; drain and squeeze dry before it goes into the stock.
- Squeeze it outThe recipe says drain, but boiled endive holds a surprising amount of water. Press it hard in a sieve or wring it in a towel, otherwise the pint of stock never reduces and the butter-and-flour thickening turns slack.
- The sugar is doing real workA teaspoon of sugar against the bitterness of chicory is the hinge of the dish. Do not leave it out on the grounds that a vegetable dish should not be sweet — it is balancing, not sweetening, and the lemon juice at the end plays against it.
- Thicken with butter and flourMost likely a kneaded butter-and-flour paste (beurre manie), whisked into the simmering liquid in small pieces; roughly equal weights of soft butter and flour, a small knob for a pint of stock. Espagnole, the alternative given, is the classic brown sauce of brown stock, browned mirepoix and roux — a good jarred or homemade demi-glace stands in.
- Fricandeau of vealA larded, braised cushion of veal, glazed with its own reduced liquor. Any braised or roast veal, or a pork loin, sits happily with this; the poached-egg version turns it into a light supper on its own.
- YieldSix heads and a pint of stock serves three or four as a side. The "1d. to 2d. per head" reflects an era when endive was a cheap winter market green.
Cassell's places this in the second course, which in a Victorian dinner meant the run of lighter roasts, entremets and dressed vegetables that followed the removes — endive with a fricandeau of veal is exactly the sort of pairing that structure produced. Cooked chicory of this kind is far more a French habit than an English one, and the recipe shows it: the Espagnole, the fricandeau and the pinch of sugar to answer the bitterness are all lifted from French practice, whose influence on English cookery writing is generally traced to figures like Ude and Soyer. Endive was said to be a common winter green in market gardens around London, and it was often blanched under pots or boards in the field to pale the heart and reduce its bitterness before it ever reached the kitchen — which is part of why a modern cook, working with an unblanched supermarket head, may find the finished dish sharper than the book expects.