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ENDIVE (French method)
Take half a dozen heads of endive for a dish, and choose those which are fresh and yellow. Strip away the outer leaves, and cut off the stalks to separate the other leaves, and wash the endive in several waters. This vegetable needs to be washed with scrupulous care, because it usually contains a good deal of grit. Throw the endive into a stewpan half filled with boiling water slightly salted, leave the pan uncovered, and boil quickly till it is tender. The endive will take about twenty-five minutes. Drain it in a colander, press all the moisture from it, and either chop it very finely or rub it through a wire sieve. The latter method is to be preferred. Melt half an ounce of butter in a clean stewpan, mix half an ounce of flour with it, beat it to a paste, add salt and pepper, a tea-spoonful of white sugar, and a gill of cream. Stir the sauce till smooth and thick, put in the endive, and keep stirring till the pulp is firm enough to be piled upon a dish, then serve with fried sippets round it. If liked, broth can be used instead of cream in making the sauce for the endive. Time to boil the vegetable, twenty-five minutes; to stew it with the sauce, about ten minutes. Probable cost of endive, 2d. per head. Sufficient for five or six persons.
A creamed purée of bitter salad chicory, served piled up with fried bread. Two things decide whether it works: which plant you buy, and how dry you get the pulp before the sauce goes near it.
- Which endive"Heads... fresh and yellow" means curly endive or escarole (Cichorium endivia), grown blanched so the hearts are pale. It is not the tight white torpedo sold today as Belgian endive or witloof chicory, which is a different plant and cooks in a fraction of the time. Six heads of escarole is a great deal of leaf; three large heads will fill a dish.
- The hinge: press it dryBoiled chicory holds an extraordinary amount of water, and a wet purée will never "pile upon a dish". Drain, then press hard in the colander or twist it in a clean towel before it meets the sauce, and expect to stir it over heat for the full ten minutes to drive off more.
- Uncovered pan, fast boilLeaving the lid off is the traditional handling for green vegetables, usually explained as keeping them from going drab olive; it will not carry off the bitterness, which stays in the leaf. Keep the water at a rolling boil and salt it properly.
- Twenty-five minutes is longThat timing suits big field-grown heads with thick ribs. Modern trimmed escarole is tender in 8 to 12 minutes; taste a rib rather than watch the clock, and stop as soon as it crushes easily.
- A gill of cream5 fl oz in the British measure this book uses, so a little over half a cup. Half an ounce of butter is about a tablespoon, half an ounce of flour about two — a small roux, which is all that is wanted since the vegetable itself provides the body.
- Sieve or processorRubbing through a wire sieve gives a smoother result than chopping because it catches the tough rib fibres. A food processor is quicker but keeps the fibres in; if you use one, pull out the coarsest ribs first.
- The sugarA teaspoon of sugar is not sweetening, it is balancing the bitterness of the chicory. Leave it in, and taste before adding more salt — the purée concentrates as it stiffens.
- SippetsSmall triangles or fingers of bread fried in butter, arranged round the edge of the dish. Fry them last so they stay crisp against the wet purée.
- YieldAs given, a vegetable side for five or six. The broth variation makes a leaner dish that suits roast pork or game better than the cream version does.
Cassell's calls this the "French method," though the reason for the name is not given. The plant reaches English cookery books under a confusion of names that has never fully cleared up: endive, chicory and succory were used loosely for both Cichorium endivia and C. intybus, and the blanching of hearts under boards or soil to draw out the bitterness was standard market-garden practice long before the Belgian forced witloof became common. The recipe notes only that endive "usually contains a good deal of grit" and puts the probable cost at twopence a head.