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Endive, Stewed
Strip off the outer green leaves from half a dozen heads of endive. Use salted water plentifully, to dislodge the insects; soak the heads in it, then drain, and boil them twenty-five minutes in water salted slightly. Have ready a stewpan with an ounce of butter, and when the endive has been squeezed dry and the butter melted, put it into the pan, and add a salt-spoonful of salt, pepper, and a gill of cream. Let all get thoroughly hot, and move the contents of the pan while heating. Probable cost, 1d. to 2d. per head. Sufficient for three or four persons.
A plain Victorian vegetable side: bitter chicory boiled soft, squeezed dry, then finished in butter and cream. Two things decide whether it works — what you buy, and how hard you wring it out.
- What "endive" means hereNot the pale Belgian chicons sold as endive in the United States, but the loose, curly-leaved heads of Cichorium endivia — frisée or escarole. Six heads is a large quantity of leaf that cooks down to very little.
- The hinge: squeeze it dryBoiled chicory holds an enormous amount of water, and any that stays behind will thin the cream into a grey puddle. Press the drained leaves hard in a colander or twist them in a clean towel before they meet the butter.
- Twenty-five minutesThat is a long boil even for a bitter leaf, and it gives the soft, almost purée-like texture the period wanted. Ten to twelve minutes gives a greener, more distinct result if that suits you better; the recipe is not harmed by the change.
- A gill5 fl oz in the British measure this book used, which is about two-thirds of an American cup (the smaller US gill is the half-cup). With an ounce of butter (2 tablespoons) that is a generous coating for the cooked volume, not a sauce to pool.
- A salt-spoonfulAbout a quarter teaspoon. The leaves have already been boiled in salted water, so season at the end rather than at the start.
- The salted soakA long-standing method for driving insects out of curly heads, which trap grit and aphids deep in the crown. Cold water with a good handful of salt for fifteen minutes, then a rinse, still does the job; separate the leaves rather than soaking whole heads.
- BitternessModern escarole and frisee are generally reckoned milder than older strains, though how much nineteenth-century forms differed is not really documented; either way, much of the bitterness goes off into the boiling water. Do not reuse it, and do not cover the pan.
- YieldThree or four as a side dish, as stated. It is not a main course.
Cassell's places this among plain English vegetable cookery, though the treatment has close French cousins: endives à la crème and chicorée au beurre rest on the same sequence of blanching a bitter leaf, pressing it, and enriching it with butter and cream to make it palatable — a finishing method common to both cuisines rather than the property of either. Chicory and endive were valued in Victorian kitchen gardens because they cropped through autumn and winter when little else green was available, and the costing here — a penny or twopence a head — marks it as an everyday vegetable rather than a luxury. The instruction to soak in heavily salted water is a reminder of how produce arrived before commercial washing: curly heads came in from the garden or the market with their insects still in them, and dealing with that came before anything else.